


Jason Grace and the imprisoned goddess

by tayaris_limye



Series: The tales and tribulations of Jason Grace [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: And Jason has a proper backstory, Canon Divergence, Gen, Jason and Reyna are best friends okay, Not Beta Read, and less sidequests, and more memories, it's really just the book with more of jason's feelings, let's just say I change the things I don't like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 104,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24234553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tayaris_limye/pseuds/tayaris_limye
Summary: This is a rewrite of The Lost Hero from Jason's POV, in first person. I (mostly) update daily
Relationships: Jason Grace & Leo Valdez, Jason Grace & Piper McLean & Leo Valdez
Series: The tales and tribulations of Jason Grace [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1751059
Comments: 36
Kudos: 15





	1. I lose a shoe

Even before I got electrocuted, I was having a rotten day.

I woke in the backseat of a school bus, not sure where I was, holding hands with a girl I didn’t know. That wasn’t necessarily the rotten part. The girl was cute, but I couldn’t figure out who she was or what I was doing there. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, trying to think.

A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of me, listening to iPods, talking, or sleeping. They all looked around my age … fifteen? Sixteen? Okay, that was scary. I didn’t know my own age. I scrambled through my brain. What was my name? Jason, said a voice in the back of my mind. My name is Jason.

I couldn’t remember anything else.

The bus rumbled along a bumpy road. Out the windows, desert rolled by under a bright blue sky. I was pretty sure he didn’t live in the desert. I tried to think back again. The last thing I remembered …

The girl squeezed my hand. “Jason, you okay?”

I turned to look at her. She wore faded jeans, hiking boots, and a fleece snowboarding jacket. Her chocolate brown hair was cut choppy and uneven, with thin strands braided down the sides. She wore no makeup like she was trying not to draw attention to herself, but it didn’t work. She was seriously pretty. Her eyes seemed to change color like a kaleidoscope—brown, blue, and green.

I let go of her hand. “Um, I don’t—”

In the front of the bus, a teacher shouted, “All right, cupcakes, listen up!”

The guy was obviously a coach. His baseball cap was pulled low over his hair, so you could just see his beady eyes. He had a wispy goatee and a sour face, like he’d eaten something moldy. His buff arms and chest pushed against a bright orange polo shirt. His nylon workout pants and Nikes were spotless white. A whistle hung from his neck, and a megaphone was clipped to his belt. He would’ve looked pretty scary if he hadn’t been five feet zero. When he stood up in the aisle, one of the students called, “Stand up, Coach Hedge!”

“I heard that!” The coach scanned the bus for the offender. Then his eyes fixed on me, and his scowl deepened.

A jolt went down my spine. I was sure the coach knew I didn’t belong there. He was going to call me out, demand to know what I was doing on the bus—and I wouldn’t have a clue what to say.

But Coach Hedge looked away and cleared his throat. “We’ll arrive in five minutes! Stay with your partner. Don’t lose your worksheet. And if any of you precious little cupcakes causes any trouble on this trip, I will personally send you back to campus the hard way.”

He picked up a baseball bat and made like he was hitting a homer.

I frowned and looked at the girl next to me. “Can he talk to us that way?”

She shrugged. “Always does. This is the Wilderness School. ‘Where kids are the animals.’” She said it like it was a joke we’d shared before.

“This is some kind of mistake,” I said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

The boy in front of me turned and laughed. “Yeah, right, Jason. We’ve all been framed! I didn’t run away six times. Piper didn’t steal a BMW.”

The girl blushed. “I didn’t steal that car, Leo!”

“Oh, I forgot, Piper. What was your story? You ‘talked’ the dealer into lending it to you?” He raised his eyebrows at me like, _Can you believe her?_ I squirmed.

Leo looked like a Latino Santa’s elf, with curly black hair, pointy ears, a cheerful, babyish face, and a mischievous smile that told you right away this guy should not be trusted around matches or sharp objects. His long, nimble fingers wouldn’t stop moving—drumming on the seat, sweeping his hair behind his ears, fiddling with the buttons of his army fatigue jacket. Either the kid was naturally hyper or he was hopped up on enough sugar and caffeine to give a heart attack to a water buffalo.

“Anyway,” Leo said, “I hope you’ve got your worksheet, ’cause I used mine for spit wads days ago. Why are you looking at me like that? Somebody draw on my face again?”

“I don’t know you,” I said. Why was he talking at me like that?

Leo gave me a crocodile grin. “Sure. I’m not your best friend. I’m his evil clone.”

My best friend? I racked my brain again. I had never met Leo before today. My best friend’s name was…

“Leo Valdez!” Coach Hedge yelled from the front. I jumped in my seat, and lost the thought. “Problem back there?”

Leo winked at me. “Watch this.” He turned to the front. “Sorry, Coach! I was having trouble hearing you. Could you use your megaphone, please?”

Coach Hedge grunted like he was pleased to have an excuse. He unclipped the megaphone from his belt and continued giving directions, but his voice came out like Darth Vader’s. The kids cracked up. The coach tried again, but this time the megaphone blared: “The cow says moo!”

The kids howled, and the coach slammed down the megaphone. “Valdez!”

Piper stifled a laugh. “My god, Leo. How did you do that?”

Leo slipped a tiny Phillips head screwdriver from his sleeve. “I’m a special boy.”

“Guys, seriously,” I pleaded. “What am I doing here? Where are we going?”

Piper knit her eyebrows. “Jason, are you joking?”

“No! I have no idea—”

“Aw, yeah, he’s joking,” Leo said. “He’s trying to get me back for that shaving cream on the Jell-O thing, aren’t you?”

I stared at him blankly. Again, something else that I didn’t know. If someone could just explain what was going on…

“No, I think he’s serious.” Piper tried to take my hand again, but I pulled it away.

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “I don’t—I can’t—”

I needed an out from there. Or an explanation. Possibly both.

“That’s it!” Coach Hedge yelled from the front. “The back row has just volunteered to clean up after lunch!” The rest of the kids cheered.

“There’s a shocker,” Leo muttered.

But Piper kept her eyes on me, like she couldn’t decide whether to be hurt or worried.

“Did you hit your head or something? You really don’t know who we are?”

I shrugged helplessly. If it were only that. “It’s worse than that. I don’t know who I am.”

The bus dropped us in front of a big red stucco complex like a museum, just sitting in the middle of nowhere. Maybe that’s what it was: the National Museum of Nowhere. A cold wind blew across the desert. I hadn’t paid much attention to what he was wearing, but it wasn’t nearly warm enough: jeans and sneakers, a purple T-shirt, and a thin black windbreaker. I tugged at my T-shirt. The purple seemed important, for some reason.

“So, a crash course for the amnesiac,” Leo said, in a helpful tone that didn’t make him sound helpful at all. “We go to the ‘Wilderness School’” Leo made air quotes with his fingers. “Which means we’re ‘bad kids.’ Your family, or the court, or whoever, decided you were too much trouble, so they shipped you off to this lovely prison—sorry, ‘boarding school’—in Armpit, Nevada, where you learn valuable nature skills like running ten miles a day through the cacti and weaving daisies into hats! And for a special treat we go on ‘educational’ field trips with Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat. Is it all coming back to you now?”

“No.” I glanced apprehensively at the other kids: maybe twenty guys, half that many girls. None of them looked like hardened criminals, but they’d all somehow been sentenced to a school for delinquents. What had I done to be here?

Leo rolled his eyes. “You’re really gonna play this out, huh? Okay, so the three of us started here together this semester. We’re totally tight. You do everything I say and give me your dessert and do my chores—”

“Leo!” Piper snapped.

“Fine. Ignore that last part. But we are friends. Well, Piper’s a little more than your friend, the last few weeks—”

“Leo, stop it!” Piper’s face turned red. My own face felt like a furnace. I’d remember it if I’d been going out with a girl like Piper. At least, I thought so.

“He’s got amnesia or something,” Piper said. “We’ve got to tell somebody.”

Leo scoffed. “Who, Coach Hedge? He’d try to fix Jason by whacking him upside the head.”

The coach was at the front of the group, barking orders and blowing his whistle to keep the kids in line; but every so often he’d glance back at me and scowl. I tried to convince myself that I was imagining it, the one half of my brain was stubborn.

“Leo, Jason needs help,” Piper insisted. “He’s got a concussion or—”

“Yo, Piper.” One of the other guys dropped back to join them as the group was heading into the museum. The new guy wedged himself between Piper and me and knocked Leo down. “Don’t talk to these bottom-feeders. You’re my partner, remember?”

The new guy had dark hair cut Superman style, a deep tan, and teeth so white they should’ve come with a warning label: _do not stare directly at teeth. Permanent blindness may occur_. He wore a Dallas Cowboys jersey, Western jeans and boots, and he smiled like he was God’s gift to juvenile delinquent girls everywhere. I hated him instantly.

“Go away, Dylan,” Piper grumbled. “I didn’t ask to work with you.”

“Ah, that’s no way to be. This is your lucky day!” Dylan hooked his arm through hers and dragged her through the museum entrance. Piper shot one last look over her shoulder like, _911_.

Leo got up and brushed himself off. “I hate that guy.” He offered his arm, like we should go skipping inside together. “‘I’m Dylan. I’m so cool, I want to date myself, but I can’t figure out how! You want to date me instead? You’re so lucky!’”

“Leo,” I said, “you’re weird.”

“Yeah, you tell me that a lot.” Leo grinned. “But if you don’t remember me, that means I can reuse all my old jokes. Come on!”

If this was my best friend, my life must be pretty messed up.

For some reason, that last part actually felt right. Great. I ignored the feeling, and followed Leo into the museum.

We walked through the building, stopping here and there for Coach Hedge to lecture us with his megaphone, which alternately made him sound like a Sith Lord or blared out random comments like “The pig says oink.”

Leo kept pulling out nuts, bolts, and pipe cleaners from the pockets of his army jacket and putting them together, like he had to keep his hands busy at all times.

I was too distracted to pay much attention to the exhibits, but I gathered that they were about the Grand Canyon and the Hualapai tribe, which owned the museum.

Some girls kept looking over at Piper and Dylan and snickering. They probably were the popular clique. They wore matching jeans and pink tops and enough makeup for a Halloween party.

One of them said, “Hey, Piper, does your tribe run this place? Do you get in free if you do a rain dance?”

The other girls laughed. Even Piper’s so-called partner Dylan suppressed a smile. Piper’s snowboarding jacket sleeves hid her hands, but I was sure that she was clenching her fists. I was, too.

“My dad’s Cherokee,” Piper said. “Not Hualapai. ’Course, you’d need a few brain cells to know the difference, Isabel.”

Isabel widened her eyes in mock surprise. That made her look like an owl with a makeup addiction. “Oh, sorry! Was your mom in this tribe? Oh, that’s right. You never knew your mom.”

Piper charged her, but before a fight could start, Coach Hedge barked, “Enough back there! Set a good example or I’ll break out my baseball bat!”

The group shuffled on to the next exhibit, but the girls kept calling out little comments to Piper.

“Good to be back on the rez?” one asked in a sweet voice.

“Dad’s probably too drunk to work,” another said with fake sympathy. “That’s why she turned klepto.”

Piper ignored them, but I was more than ready to punch them myself. I hated mean kids; I knew that much.

Leo caught my arm. “Be cool. Piper doesn’t like us fighting her battles. Besides, if those girls found out the truth about her dad, they’d be all bowing down to her and screaming, ‘We’re not worthy!’”

“Why? What about her dad?” Was this another plot twist?

Leo laughed in disbelief. “You’re not kidding? You really don’t remember that your girlfriend’s dad—”

I cut him off. I’d only woken up thirty minutes ago, and I was already fed up with this amnesia.

“Look, I wish I did, but I don’t even remember her, much less her dad.”

Leo whistled. “Whatever. We have to talk when we get back to the dorm.”

We reached the far end of the exhibit hall, where some big glass doors led out to a terrace.

“All right, cupcakes,” Coach Hedge announced. “You are about to see the Grand Canyon. Try not to break it. The skywalk can hold the weight of seventy jumbo jets, so you featherweights should be safe out there. If possible, try to avoid pushing each other over the edge, as that would cause me extra paperwork.”

The coach opened the doors, and we all stepped outside. The Grand Canyon spread before us, live and in person. Extending over the edge was a horseshoe-shaped walkway made of glass, so you could see right through it.

“Man,” Leo said. “That’s pretty wicked.”

He was right. I was downright impressed. The view was so amazing that I eased up for a second.

The canyon was bigger and wider than you could appreciate from a picture. We were up so high that birds circled below their feet. Five hundred feet down, a river snaked along the canyon floor. Banks of storm clouds had moved overhead while we’d been inside, casting shadows like angry faces across the cliffs. As far as I could see in any direction, red and gray ravines cut through the desert like some crazy god had taken a knife to it.

A piercing pain stabbed me behind the eyes. Crazy gods ... Where had I come up with that idea? It felt like it was close to something important—something I should know about. As important as my age, or perhaps more. For some reason, it made me sure of one thing: I was in danger.

“You all right?” Leo asked. “You’re not going to throw up over the side, are you? ’Cause I should’ve brought my camera.”

I grabbed the railing. I was shivering, and my palms and neck were coated in sweat, but it had nothing to do with heights. I blinked and counted to ten. The pain subsided. I straightened up.

“I’m fine,” I managed. “Just a headache.”

Thunder rumbled overhead. A cold wind almost knocked me sideways. Wind. That pulled at something.

“This can’t be safe.” Leo squinted at the clouds. “Storm’s right over us, but it’s clear all the way around. Weird, huh?”

I looked up. Leo was right. A dark circle of clouds had parked itself over the skywalk, but the rest of the sky in every direction was perfectly clear. I had a bad feeling about that.

“All right, cupcakes!” Coach Hedge yelled. He frowned at the storm like it bothered him too. “We may have to cut this short, so get to work! Remember, complete sentences!”

The storm rumbled, and my headache came back. I reached into my jeans pocket, not really knowing why. It felt like a familiar gesture. There was a coin in my pocket. I examined it, again feeling that I should recognize it. The coin was a circle of gold the size of a half-dollar, but thicker and more uneven. Stamped on one side was a picture of a battle-ax. On the other was some guy’s face wreathed in laurels. The inscription said something like IVLIVS.

“Dang, is that gold?” Leo asked. “You been holding out on me!”

I put the coin away. Why did I have it in my pocket? Why did it feel familiar? I was sure that normal kids my age didn’t carry roman coins wherever they went. Whatever my age was.

I stopped short. Roman. How did I know that the coin was roman? And why in hell did it feel like I was going to need it soon? My instincts were going crazy, but my brain couldn’t tell me the reason behind it.

“It’s nothing,” I said to Leo. I didn’t feel like explaining all my doubts right now. “Just a coin.”

Leo shrugged. Maybe his mind had to keep moving as much as his hands. “Come on,” he said. “Dare you to spit over the edge.”

We didn’t try very hard on the worksheet. For one thing, I was too distracted. Between the storm and my brain’s racket, I couldn’t have done any worksheet. For another thing, I didn’t have any idea how to “name three sedimentary strata you observe” or “describe two examples of erosion.”

Leo was no help. He was too busy building a helicopter out of pipe cleaners.

“Check it out.” He launched the copter. I thought it would plummet, but the pipe-cleaner blades actually spun. The little copter made it halfway across the canyon before it lost momentum and spiraled into the void.

“How’d you do that?” I asked. Leo was definitely weird.

He shrugged. “Would’ve been cooler if I had some rubber bands.”

“Seriously,” I asked, “are we friends?”

“Last I checked.”

“You sure?” It was impossible, but if he could at least give me details… “What was the first day we met? What did we talk about?”

“It was …” Leo frowned. “I don’t recall exactly. I’m ADHD, man. You can’t expect me to remember details.”

Great. Just great.

“But I don’t remember you at all. I don’t remember anyone here. What if—”

“You’re right and everyone else is wrong?” Leo asked. “You think you just appeared here this morning, and we’ve all got fake memories of you?”

That was exactly what I thought. I had never met these people. I wasn’t supposed to be here. But it sounded crazy. Everybody here took me for granted. Everyone acted like I was a normal part of the class.

Except for Coach Hedge.

“Take the worksheet.” I handed Leo the paper. “I’ll be right back.”

Before Leo could protest, I headed across the skywalk.

We had the place all to ourselves. Maybe it was too early in the day for tourists, or maybe the weird weather had scared them off. The Wilderness School kids had spread out in pairs across the skywalk. Most were joking around or talking. Some of the guys were dropping pennies over the side. About fifty feet away, Piper was trying to fill out her worksheet, but her stupid partner Dylan was hitting on her, putting his hand on her shoulder and giving her that blinding white smile. She kept pushing him away, and when she saw me, she gave me a look like, _Throttle this guy for me_.

I would have loved to, but I still motioned for her to hang on. I walked up to Coach Hedge, who was leaning on his baseball bat, studying the storm clouds.

“Did you do this?” the coach asked.

I took a step back. “Do what?”

It sounded like the coach had just asked if I’d made the thunderstorm. I mean, I had no idea who I was, but control storms? Was this guy just crazy?

Coach Hedge glared at me. His beady little eyes glinted under the brim of his cap. “Don’t play games with me, kid. What are you doing here, and why are you messing up my job?”

My heart skipped a beat.

“You mean...you don’t know me?” I said. “I’m not one of your students?”

Hedge snorted. “Never seen you before today.”

I was so relieved I wanted to cry. I wasn’t going insane. I had been right; I was in the wrong place. “Look, sir, I don’t know how I got here. I just woke up on the school bus. All I know is I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Got that right.” Hedge’s gruff voice dropped to a murmur, like he was sharing a secret. “You got a powerful way with the Mist, kid, if you can make all these people think they know you; but you can’t fool me. I’ve been smelling monster for days now. I knew we had an infiltrator, but you don’t smell like a monster. You smell like a half-blood. So—who are you, and where’d you come from?”

Okay. None of what he said made any sense, but he knew something. I answered honestly. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t have any memories. You’ve got to help me.”

Coach Hedge studied me like he was trying to read my mind. Well, if he thought that I could make thunderstorms, telepathy wasn’t that far-fetched.

“Great,” he muttered. “You’re being truthful.”

“Of course I am!” I forced my voice to stay as low as possible. “And what was all that about monsters and half-bloods? Are those code words or something?”

Hedge narrowed his eyes. Part of me insisted that he was just nuts. But the other part knew better.

“Look, kid,” Hedge said, “I don’t know who you are. I just know what you are, and it means trouble. Now I got to protect three of you rather than two. Are you the special package? Is that it?”

“What are you talking about?”

Please, no more weird plot twists.

Hedge looked at the storm. The clouds were getting thicker and darker, hovering right over the skywalk.

“This morning,” Hedge said, “I got a message from camp. They said an extraction team is on the way. They’re coming to pick up a special package, but they wouldn’t give me details. I thought to myself, Fine. The two I’m watching are pretty powerful, older than most. I know they’re being stalked. I can smell a monster in the group. I figure that’s why the camp is suddenly frantic to pick them up. But then you pop up out of nowhere. So, are you the special package?”

The throbbing in my head got worse than ever. _Half-bloods. Camp. Monsters_. I still didn’t know what Hedge was talking about, but the words gave me a massive brain freeze—like my mind was trying to access information that should’ve been there but wasn’t.

I stumbled, and Coach Hedge caught me. For a short guy, the coach had hands like steel.

“Whoa, there, cupcake. You say you got no memories, huh? Fine. I’ll just have to watch you, too, until the team gets here. We’ll let the director figure things out.”

“What director?” I said. It looked like everything I said today were questions. “What camp?”

Those words seemed important. They sounded right. Just like the coin in my pocket had felt familiar.

“Just sit tight. Reinforcements should be here soon. Hopefully, nothing happens before—”

Lightning crackled overhead. The wind picked up with a vengeance. Worksheets flew into the Grand Canyon, and the entire bridge shuddered. Kids screamed, stumbling and grabbing the rails.

“I had to say something,” Hedge grumbled. He bellowed into his megaphone: “Everyone inside! The cow says moo! Off the skywalk!”

“I thought you said this thing was stable!” I shouted over the wind.

“Under normal circumstances,” Hedge agreed, “which these aren’t. Come on!”

The storm churned into a miniature hurricane. Funnel clouds snaked toward the skywalk like the tendrils of a monster jellyfish.

Kids screamed and ran for the building. The wind snatched away their notebooks, jackets, hats, and backpacks. I skidded across the slick floor.

Leo lost his balance and almost toppled over the railing. I grabbed his jacket just in time and pulled him back.

“Thanks, man!” Leo yelled.

“Go, go, go!” said Coach Hedge.

Piper and Dylan were holding the doors open, herding the other kids inside. Piper’s snowboarding jacket was flapping wildly, her dark hair all in her face. She must’ve been freezing, but she looked calm and confident—telling the others it would be okay, encouraging them to keep moving.

We ran toward them, but it was like running through quicksand. The wind seemed to fight us, pushing us back.

Dylan and Piper pushed one more kid inside, then lost their grip on the doors. They slammed shut, closing off the skywalk. There were only five of us in the platform now.

Piper tugged at the handles. Inside, the kids pounded on the glass, but the doors seemed to be stuck.

“Dylan, help!” Piper shouted.

Dylan just stood there with an idiotic grin, his Cowboys jersey rippling in the wind, like he was suddenly enjoying the storm.

“Sorry, Piper,” he said. “I’m done helping.”

He flicked his wrist, and Piper flew backward, slamming into the doors and sliding to the skywalk deck.

“Piper!” I tried to charge forward, but the wind was against me, and Coach Hedge pushed me back.

“Coach,” I said, “let me go!” She wasn’t my girlfriend, but she needed help.

“Jason, Leo, stay behind me,” the coach ordered. “This is my fight. I should’ve known that was our monster.”

Monster. Again, my brain, insisted on looking for information that just wasn’t there.

“What?” Leo demanded. A rogue worksheet slapped him in the face, but he swatted it away. “What monster?”

The coach’s cap blew off, and sticking up above his curly hair were two bumps—like the knots cartoon characters get when they’re bonked on the head. Coach Hedge lifted his baseball bat—but it wasn’t a regular bat anymore. Somehow it had changed into a crudely shaped tree-branch club, with twigs and leaves still attached. My brain jumped. That was a clue of something. I was getting close, but to what?

Dylan gave the coach that psycho happy smile. “Oh, come on, Coach. Let the boy attack me! After all, you’re getting too old for this. Isn’t that why they retired you to this stupid school? I’ve been on your team the entire season, and you didn’t even know. You’re losing your nose, grandpa.”

The coach made an angry sound like an animal bleating. My mind was racing. “That’s it, cupcake. You’re going down.”

“You think you can protect three half-bloods at once, old man?” Dylan laughed. “Good luck.”

Dylan pointed at Leo, and a funnel cloud materialized around him. Leo flew off the skywalk like he’d been tossed. Somehow he managed to twist in midair, and slammed sideways into the canyon wall. He skidded, clawing furiously for any handhold. Finally he grabbed a thin ledge about fifty feet below the skywalk and hung there by his fingertips.

“Help!” he yelled. “Rope, please? Bungee cord? Something?”

Coach Hedge cursed and tossed me his club. “I don’t know who you are, kid, but I hope you’re good. Keep that thing busy,” he stabbed a thumb at Dylan, “while I get Leo.”

“Get him how?” I demanded. “You going to fly?”

“Not fly. Climb.” Hedge kicked off his shoes, and I almost had a coronary. The coach didn’t have any feet. He had hooves—goat’s hooves. Which meant those things on his head weren’t bumps. They were horns. My brain sagged in relief. Finally something that I recognized.

“You’re a faun,” I said.

“Satyr!” Hedge snapped. “Fauns are Roman. But we’ll talk about that later.”

Hedge leaped over the railing. He sailed toward the canyon wall and hit hooves first. He bounded down the cliff with impossible agility, finding footholds no bigger than postage stamps, dodging whirlwinds that tried to attack him as he picked his way toward Leo.

“Isn’t that cute!” Dylan turned toward me. “Now it’s your turn, boy.”

I threw the club. It seemed useless with the winds so strong, but the club flew right at Dylan, even curving when he tried to dodge, and smacked him on the head so hard he fell to his knees. My brain jumped back into action. I told it to shut up. Right now, I wanted to live. I could ask questions later.

Piper wasn’t as dazed as she appeared. Her fingers closed around the club when it rolled next to her, but before she could use it, Dylan rose. Blood —golden blood—trickled from his forehead.

My brain didn’t listen to me and jumped again. I’d seen that before, but words escaped me.

“Nice try, boy.” He glared at me. “But you’ll have to do better.”

The skywalk shuddered. Hairline fractures appeared in the glass. I held my footing, trying not to break the glass even more. Inside the museum, kids stopped banging on the doors. They backed away, watching in terror.

Dylan’s body dissolved into smoke, as if his molecules were coming unglued. He had the same face, the same brilliant white smile, but his whole form was suddenly composed of swirling black vapor, his eyes like electrical sparks in a living storm cloud. He sprouted black smoky wings and rose above the skywalk. If angels could be evil, they would look exactly like that.

My brain was loving it.

“You’re a ventus,” I said, though I had no idea how I knew that word. I was just relieved that my mind wasn’t completely empty. “A storm spirit.”

Dylan’s laugh sounded like a tornado tearing off a roof. “I’m glad I waited, demigod. Leo and Piper I’ve known about for weeks. Could’ve killed them at any time. But my mistress said a third was coming—someone special. She’ll reward me greatly for your death!”

Two more funnel clouds touched down on either side of Dylan and turned into venti—ghostly young men with smoky wings and eyes that flickered with lightning.

Piper stayed down, pretending to be dazed, her hand still gripping the club. Her face was pale, but she gave me a determined look, and her message was clear: _Keep their attention. I’ll brain them from behind._

Cute, smart, and violent. It’d be great to remember having her as a girlfriend.

I clenched my fists and got ready to charge, but I never got a chance. Dylan raised his hand, arcs of electricity running between his fingers, and blasted me in the chest.

 _Bang!_ I was flat on my back. My mouth tasted like burning aluminum foil. My clothes were smoking. The lightning bolt had gone straight though my body and blasted off my left shoe. My toes were black with soot.

For once, my brain remained silent.

The storm spirits were laughing. The winds raged. Piper was screaming defiantly, but it all sounded tinny and far away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Coach Hedge climbing the cliff with Leo on his back. Piper was on her feet, desperately swinging the club to fend off the two extra storm spirits, but they were just toying with her. The club went right through their bodies like they weren’t there. And Dylan, a dark and winged tornado with eyes, loomed over me.

“Stop,” I croaked. I rose to his feet, trying not to stumble. I’m not sure who was more surprised: me, or the storm spirits.

“How are you alive?” Dylan’s form flickered. “That was enough lightning to kill twenty men!”

“My turn,” I said. My instincts yelled in happiness. Finally, something they knew how to do.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the gold coin, the only familiar thing in the middle of the storm. I let my instincts take over, flipping the coin in the air like I’d done it a thousand times. I might have, for all I knew. I caught it, and suddenly I was holding a sword: a wickedly sharp double-edged weapon. The ridged grip fit my fingers perfectly, and the whole thing was gold: hilt, handle, and blade.

Dylan snarled and backed up. He looked at his two comrades and yelled, “Well? Kill him!”

The other storm spirits didn’t look happy with that order, but they flew at me, their fingers crackling with electricity.

I swung at the first spirit. My sword passed through it, and the creature’s smoky form disintegrated. The second spirit let loose a bolt of lightning, but my sword absorbed the charge. I stepped in—one quick thrust, and the second storm spirit dissolved into gold powder.

Dylan wailed in outrage. He looked down as if expecting his comrades to re-form, but their gold dust remains dispersed in the wind. “Impossible! Who are you, half-blood?”

I had no idea, but one thing was for sure: I was very good at this.

Piper was so stunned she dropped her club. “Jason, how …?”

Coach Hedge leaped back onto the skywalk and dumped Leo like a sack of flour.

“Spirits, fear me!” Hedge bellowed, flexing his short arms. Then he looked around and realized there was only Dylan.

“Curse it, boy!” he snapped. “Didn’t you leave some for me? I like a challenge!”

Leo got to his feet, breathing hard. He looked completely humiliated, his hands bleeding from clawing at the rocks. “Yo, Coach Supergoat, whatever you are—I just fell down the freaking Grand Canyon! Stop asking for challenges!”

Dylan hissed at them, but there was fear in his eyes. “You have no idea how many enemies you’ve awakened, half-bloods. My mistress will destroy all demigods. This war you cannot win.”

Above us, the storm exploded into a full-force gale. Cracks expanded in the skywalk. Sheets of rain poured down, and I had to crouch to keep his balance.

A hole opened in the clouds—a swirling vortex of black and silver.

“The mistress calls me back!” Dylan shouted with glee. “And you, demigod, will come with me!”

He lunged at me, but Piper tackled the monster from behind. Even though he was made of smoke, Piper somehow managed to connect. Both of them went sprawling.

We surged forward to help, but the spirit screamed with rage. He let loose a torrent that knocked them all backward. Coach Hedge and I landed on our butts. My sword skidded across the glass. Leo hit the back of his head and curled on his side, dazed and groaning. Piper got the worst of it. She was thrown off Dylan’s back and hit the railing, tumbling over the side until she was hanging by one hand over the abyss.

I started toward her, but Dylan screamed, “I’ll settle for this one!”

He grabbed Leo’s arm and began to rise, towing a half-conscious Leo below him. The storm spun faster, pulling them upward like a vacuum cleaner.

“Help!” Piper yelled. “Somebody!” Then she slipped, screaming as she fell.

“Jason, go!” Hedge yelled. “Save her!”

The coach launched himself at the spirit with some serious goat fu—lashing out with his hooves, knocking Leo free from the spirit’s grasp. Leo dropped safely to the floor, but Dylan grappled the coach’s arms instead. Hedge tried to head-butt him, then kicked him and called him a cupcake. They rose into the air, gaining speed.

Coach Hedge shouted down once more, “Save her! I got this!”

Then the satyr and the storm spirit spiraled into the clouds and disappeared.

Save her? She was gone!

But again my instincts won. I ran to the railing, thinking, _I’m a lunatic_ , and jumped over the side.

I wasn’t scared of heights. I was scared of being smashed against the canyon floor five hundred feet below. I hadn’t accomplished anything except for dying along with Piper, but I tucked in my arms and plummeted headfirst. The sides of the canyon raced past like a film on fast-forward. My face felt like it was peeling off.

In a heartbeat, I caught up with Piper, who was flailing wildly. I tackled her waist and closed my eyes, waiting for death. Piper screamed. The wind whistled in my ears. I wondered what dying would feel like, and came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be so good. It’d be awesome if we never hit bottom.

The wind died. Piper’s scream turned into a strangled gasp. We must have died, but I hadn’t felt any impact.

“J-J-Jason,” Piper managed.

I opened my eyes. We weren’t falling. We were floating in midair, a hundred feet above the river.

I hugged Piper tight, and she repositioned herself so she was hugging me too. We were nose to nose. Her heart beat so hard, I could feel it through her clothes. Her breath smelled like cinnamon.

She said, “How did you—”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I think I would know if I could fly…”

Would I? I didn’t even know who I was.

I imagined going up. Piper yelped as they shot a few feet higher. We weren’t exactly floating. I could feel pressure under my feet, like we were balancing at the top of a geyser.

“The air is supporting us,” I said. It felt familiar, like the coin had. I liked it.

“Well, tell it to support us more! Get us out of here!”

I looked down. The easiest thing would be to sink gently to the canyon floor. Then I looked up. The rain had stopped. The storm clouds didn’t seem as bad, but they were still rumbling and flashing. There was no guarantee the spirits were gone for good. I had no idea what had happened to Coach Hedge. And I’d left Leo up there, barely conscious.

“We have to help them,” Piper said, as if reading my mind. Was it that easy? “Can you—”

“Let’s see.” I thought _Up_ , and instantly we shot skyward.

As soon as we landed on the skywalk, we ran to Leo.

Piper turned him over, and he groaned. His army coat was soaked from the rain. His curly hair glittered gold from rolling around in monster dust. But at least he wasn’t dead.

“Stupid … ugly … goat,” he muttered.

“Where did he go?” Piper asked.

Leo pointed straight up. “Never came down. Please tell me he didn’t actually save my life.”

“Twice,” I said.

Leo groaned even louder. “What happened? The tornado guy, the gold sword … I hit my head. That’s it, right? I’m hallucinating?”

The flying had made me forget about the sword. I walked over to where it was lying and picked it up. The blade was well balanced. On a hunch, I flipped it. Midspin, the sword shrank back into a coin and landed in my hand. I put it back in my pocket. The small weight just felt right.

“Yep,” Leo said. “Definitely hallucinating.”

Piper shivered in her rain-soaked clothes. “Jason, those things—”

“Venti,” I said. I still had no idea where I’d taken the word from, but it was nice to finally know something. “Storm spirits.”

“Okay. You acted like … like you’d seen them before. Who are you?”

I shook my head. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t know.”

The storm dissipated. The other kids from the Wilderness School were staring out the glass doors in horror. Security guards were working on the locks now, but they didn’t seem to be having any luck.

“Coach Hedge said he had to protect three people,” I remembered. Hey, at least my short-term memory was working. “I think he meant us.”

“And that thing Dylan turned into …” Piper shuddered. “God, I can’t believe it was hitting on me. He called us... what, demigods?”

Leo lay on his back, staring at the sky. He didn’t seem anxious to get up. “Don’t know what demi means,” he said. “But I’m not feeling too godly. You guys feeling godly?”

There was a brittle sound like dry twigs snapping, and the cracks in the skywalk began to widen.

“We need to get off this thing,” I said. “Maybe if we—”

“Ohhh-kay,” Leo interrupted. “Look up there and tell me if those are flying horses.”

At first, I thought Leo had hit his head too hard. Then I saw the dark shape descending from the east—too slow for a plane, too large for a bird. As it got closer, I saw a pair of winged animals—gray, four-legged, exactly like horses—except each one had a twenty-foot wingspan. And they were pulling a brightly painted box with two wheels: a chariot.

“Reinforcements,” I said. “Hedge told me an extraction squad was coming for us.”

“Extraction squad?” Leo struggled to his feet. “That sounds painful.”

“And where are they extracting us to?” Piper asked.

The chariot landed on the far end of the skywalk. The flying horses tucked in their wings and cantered nervously across the glass, as if they sensed it was near breaking. Two teenagers stood in the chariot—a tall blond girl maybe a little older than me, and a bulky dude with a shaved head and a face like a pile of bricks. They both wore jeans and orange T-shirts, with shields tossed over their backs. The girl leaped off before the chariot had even finished moving. She pulled a knife and ran toward us while the bulky dude was reining in the horses.

“Where is he?” the girl demanded. Her gray eyes were fierce and a little startling.

“Where’s who?” I asked. Was this something else that I was supposed to know? No, my brain was just as surprised as me.

She frowned like that answer was unacceptable. Then she turned to Leo and Piper.

“What about Gleeson? Where is your protector, Gleeson Hedge?”

The coach’s first name was Gleeson? I might’ve laughed if the morning hadn’t been quite so weird and scary. Gleeson Hedge: football coach, goat man, protector of demigods. Sure. Why not?

Leo cleared his throat. “He got taken by some … tornado things.”

“Venti,” I said. I was liking that word more and more. “Storm spirits.”

The blond girl arched an eyebrow. “You mean anemoi thuellai? That’s the Greek term. Who are you, and what happened?”

I did my best to explain, though it was hard to meet those intense gray eyes. About halfway through the story, the other guy from the chariot came over. He stood there glaring at us, his arms crossed. He had a tattoo of a rainbow on his biceps. It seemed a little unusual, but I had jumped over the Great Canyon not ten minutes ago. Rainbow tattoos were pretty normal in comparison.

When I had finished, the blond girl still didn’t look satisfied. “No, no, no! She told me he would be here. She told me if I came here, I’d find the answer.”

“Annabeth,” the bald guy grunted. “Check it out.” He pointed at my feet.

I hadn’t thought much about it, but I was still missing my left shoe, that had been blown off by the lightning. To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten about that. As weird as it sounded, the lighting had felt familiar, too. My foot was okay, as far as I could tell, but it looked like a lump of charcoal.

“The guy with one shoe,” said the bald dude. “He’s the answer.”

Stop for a minute. The answer to what? I hoped they weren’t expecting me to explain anything. I couldn’t even tell them my last name.

“No, Butch,” the girl insisted. “He can’t be. I was tricked.” She glared at the sky as though it had done something wrong. “What do you want from me?” she screamed. “What have you done with him?”

The skywalk shuddered, and the horses whinnied urgently.

“Annabeth,” said the bald dude, Butch, “we gotta leave. Let’s get these three to camp and figure it out there. Those storm spirits might come back.”

She fumed for a moment. “Fine.” She fixed me with a resentful look. “We’ll settle this later.”

She turned on her heel and marched toward the chariot.

Piper shook her head. “What’s her problem? What’s going on?”

“Seriously,” Leo agreed.

“We have to get you out of here,” Butch said. “I’ll explain on the way.”

“I’m not going anywhere with her.” I gestured toward the blonde. “She looks like she wants to kill me.”

Butch hesitated. “Annabeth’s okay. You gotta cut her some slack. She had a vision telling her to come here, to find a guy with one shoe. That was supposed to be the answer to her problem.”

“What problem?” Piper asked.

“She’s been looking for one of our campers, who’s been missing three days,” Butch said. “She’s going out of her mind with worry. She hoped he’d be here.”

“Who?” I asked. It seemed like a dangerous question.

“Her boyfriend,” Butch said. “A guy named Percy Jackson.”


	2. Guys, I'm really not a cupcake

Maybe it was because I’d just discovered I could fly, but I didn’t like the chariot.

I sat at the back with Leo and Piper, while the bald guy, Butch, handled the reins, and the blond girl, Annabeth, adjusted a bronze navigation device. We rose over the Grand Canyon and headed east, icy wind ripping straight through my jacket. Behind us, more storm clouds were gathering.

The chariot lurched and bumped. It had no seat belts and the back was wide open, but it didn’t bother me. Now that the shock was partially over, I wanted to fly again. Not just because it had been really cool. Out of the entire day, that had been the only moment I’d actually felt like I was in the right place. My head had stopped hurting for a few seconds. Right now, it had gone back to that piercing pain.

My brain was rummaging with questions. Neither Annabeth nor Butch had known me, so why did they feel familiar? Why wasn’t I nervous about going with them? Why did all the crazy stuff seem so completely natural to me?

In front of me, Piper bit her nails. Leo gripped the handle at the back of the chariot.

See, this is what normal people think when they’re flying in a chariot hundreds of feet in the air. They’re scared of falling.

I wanted to fall over and ride the wind. Yup, I was going nuts.

I noticed Piper staring at me; she must have been taking in all that had happened. I fixed my eyes in the horizon. It was grey and brown, clouds and sand mixing together in a fine line, getting away from us as the pegasi flew. The wind framed it and reframed it; so strong I could almost see the current’s edges.

Leo couldn’t calm down even in flight, apparently.

“This is so cool!” He spit a pegasus feather out of his mouth. “Where are we going?”

“A safe place,” Annabeth said. “The only safe place for kids like us. Camp Half-Blood.”

“Half-Blood?” Piper sat up. Her shoulders had tensed. I remembered the other kids’ comments back at the museum. Maybe her parents were different races? Whatever the case was, she looked hurt. “Is that some kind of bad joke?”

I would have agreed with her, but for once, I knew what Annabeth meant. And yet again, I had no idea why.

“She means we’re demigods,” I explained. “Half god, half mortal.”

Annabeth looked back at me for a second. She didn’t look murderous anymore, which was nice. “You seem to know a lot, Jason. But, yes, demigods. My mom is Athena, goddess of wisdom. Butch here is the son of Iris, the rainbow goddess.”

Leo choked. “Your mom is a rainbow goddess?”

“Got a problem with that?” Butch said.

“No, no,” Leo said. “Rainbows. Very macho.”

“Butch is our best equestrian,” Annabeth said. “He gets along great with the pegasi.”

“Rainbows, ponies,” Leo muttered.

“I’m gonna toss you off this chariot,” Butch warned.

“Demigods,” Piper said. “You mean you think you’re … you think we’re—”

Lightning flashed. The chariot shuddered, and I almost plunged into the open air.

“Left wheel’s on fire!”

Piper and Leo stepped back. The wheel was burning, white flames lapping up the side of the chariot. I was lucky I hadn’t been set on fire too.

The wind roared. I glanced behind us and saw dark shapes forming in the clouds, more venti spiraling toward the chariot—except these looked more like horses than angels.

“Why are they—” started Piper.

“Anemoi come in different shapes,” Annabeth said. “Sometimes human, sometimes stallions, depending on how chaotic they are. Hold on. This is going to get rough.”

Butch flicked the reins. The pegasi put on a burst of speed, and the chariot blurred. My stomach crawled into my throat. Piper fell slack against the wall of the chariot. Leo tried to scream, but he didn’t manage it. Annabeth and Butch held on to the reins and the handles with their eyes closed, trusting the pegasi.

I kept watching the horizon around us, as we passed it at wind’s speed. Fields, rivers and clouds all merged together in a whirlwind of colors. I was queasy when it was over, but I loved it. Maybe that was what it felt like to be wind.

When the landscape was clear again, we were in a completely different place. Leo, Piper and I perched over the edge of the chariot to see it better.

A cold gray ocean stretched out to the left. Snow-covered fields, roads, and forests spread to the right. Directly below us was a green valley, like an island of springtime, rimmed with snowy hills on three sides and water to the north. I saw a cluster of buildings like ancient Greek temples, a big blue mansion, ball courts, a lake, and a climbing wall that seemed to be on fire. But before I could really process all I was seeing, the wheels came off and the chariot dropped out of the sky.

Annabeth and Butch tried to maintain control. The pegasi labored to hold the chariot in a flight pattern, but they seemed exhausted from their burst of speed, and bearing the chariot and the weight of five people was just too much.

“The lake!” Annabeth yelled. “Aim for the lake!”

My brain supported a bit of useless information: hitting water from up high is as bad as hitting cement. _Not now, brain._

And then—BOOM.

The biggest shock was the cold. The lake was dark and freezing, and I gasped for air.

Green hands appeared in the mud, grabbing at me. I was too cold to fight them. They hauled me up, and I surged on the shore, gasping and shivering. I stood up.

Leo and Butch had already come out of the water, and as I looked, the lake creatures pulled Annabeth to the shore. I got a glimpse at their yellow eyes.

Nearby, Butch stood in the lake, cutting the wrecked harnesses off the pegasi. Fortunately, the horses looked okay, but they were flapping their wings and splashing water everywhere. A ton of kids came to us, carrying blankets and asking questions to Annabeth and Butch. Something in me wanted to hide. I tuned away the voices, and let them talk.

Apparently kids fell into the lake a lot, because a detail of campers ran up with big bronze leaf blower–looking things and blasted us with hot air; and in about two seconds our clothes were dry.

Piper appeared on the shore, coughing and shaking. She was instantly surrounded by more kids, and I lost sight of her for a few seconds.

There were at least twenty campers milling around—the youngest maybe nine, the oldest college age, eighteen or nineteen—and all of them had orange T-shirts like Annabeth’s. I looked back at the water and saw that the lake creatures were green-faced girls, staring at us from just below the surface, their hair floating in the current. They waved like, _toodle-oo_ , and disappeared into the depths. A second later the wreckage of the chariot was tossed from the lake and landed nearby with a wet crunch.

“Annabeth!” A guy with a bow and quiver on his back pushed through the crowd. “I said you could borrow the chariot, not destroy it!”

“Will, I’m sorry,” Annabeth sighed. “I’ll get it fixed, I promise.”

Will scowled at his broken chariot. Then he sized us up. “These are the ones? Way older than thirteen. Why haven’t they been claimed already?”

Claimed. My brain did another jolt. I winced. Was everything going to give me a headache?

“Claimed?” Leo asked.

Before Annabeth could explain, Will said, “Any sign of Percy?”

“No,” Annabeth admitted.

The campers muttered. I had no idea who this guy Percy was – shocker –, but his disappearance seemed to be a big deal.

Another girl stepped forward—tall, Asian, dark hair in ringlets, plenty of jewelry, and perfect makeup. Somehow she managed to make jeans and an orange T-shirt look glamorous. She glanced at Leo, eyed me like I was a cupcake behind a store window, then curled her lip at Piper as if she were a week-old burrito that had just been pulled out of a Dumpster. Piper rolled her eyes. 

“Well,” the girl said, “I hope they’re worth the trouble.”

Leo snorted. “Gee, thanks. What are we, your new pets?”

“No kidding,” I said. “How about some answers before you start judging us—like, what is this place, why are we here, how long do we have to stay?”

“Jason,” Annabeth said, “I promise we’ll answer your questions. And Drew”—she frowned at the glamour girl— “all demigods are worth saving. But I’ll admit, the trip didn’t accomplish what I hoped.”

“Hey,” Piper said, “we didn’t ask to be brought here.”

Drew sniffed. “And nobody wants you, hon. Does your hair always look like a dead badger?”

Piper stepped forward, ready to smack her, but Annabeth said, “Piper, stop.” Piper did. I could see why. Annabeth didn’t seem like somebody you wanted for an enemy.

“We need to make our new arrivals feel welcome,” Annabeth said, with another pointed look at Drew. “We’ll assign them each a guide, give them a tour of camp. Hopefully by the campfire tonight, they’ll be claimed.”

“Would somebody tell me what claimed means?” Piper asked.

Suddenly there was a collective gasp. The campers backed away.

Floating over Leo’s head was a blazing holographic image —a fiery hammer.

“That,” Annabeth said, “is claiming.”

Claiming. I knew what this was. And that symbol meant…

“What’d I do?” Leo backed toward the lake. Then he glanced up and yelped. “Is my hair on fire?” He ducked, but the symbol followed him, bobbing and weaving so it looked like he was trying to write something in flames with his head.

“This can’t be good,” Butch muttered. “The curse—”

“Butch, shut up,” Annabeth said. “Leo, you’ve just been claimed—”

“By a god,” I interrupted. If I didn’t say it, my head would explode. “That’s the symbol of Vulcan, isn’t it?”

All eyes turned to me. Well, great.

“Jason,” Annabeth said carefully, “how did you know that?”

“I’m not sure.”

I’m not sure of anything today, I thought. But I knew I was right. Claiming, gods – this was something I understood.

“Vulcan?” Leo demanded. “I don’t even LIKE Star Trek. What are you talking about?”

“Vulcan is the Roman name for Hephaestus,” Annabeth said, “the god of blacksmiths and fire.”

The fiery hammer faded, but Leo kept swatting the air like he was afraid it was following him. “The god of what? Who?”

Annabeth turned to the guy with the bow. “Will, would you take Leo, give him a tour? Introduce him to his bunk-mates in Cabin Nine.”

“Sure, Annabeth.”

“What’s Cabin Nine?” Leo asked. “And I’m not a Vulcan!”

“Come on, Mr. Spock, I’ll explain everything.” Will put a hand on his shoulder and steered him off toward the cabins.

Annabeth turned to look at me. She had grey stormy eyes, so intense that you could almost see engines behind them, calculating possibilities. I felt like a complicated blueprint, but I didn’t look away. I could have a staring contest if that’s what she wanted

Finally she said, “Hold out your arm.”

I saw what she was looking at, and a burst of electricity ran through my spine.

I had taken off my windbreaker after the dip in the lake, leaving my arms bare, and on the inside of my right forearm was a tattoo. It was darkly etched, impossible to miss: a dozen straight lines like a bar code, and over that an eagle with the letters SPQR. Again, it just made things even crazier, but I realized it didn’t surprise me. I knew this tattoo. I must have had it for a very long time, because my mind didn’t immediately ask why it was there. This strange thing, I liked.

“I’ve never seen marks like this,” Annabeth said. “Where did you get them?”

I sighed. “I’m getting really tired of saying this, but I don’t know.”

The other campers pushed forward, trying to get a look at it. I pulled back after the first five. Again, I wasn’t a sweet in a store.

“They look burned into your skin,” Annabeth noticed.

“They were,” I said, and immediately stopped. They were? How did I know that? “I mean … I think so. I don’t remember.”

No one said anything. It was clear the campers saw Annabeth as the leader. They were waiting for her verdict.

“He needs to go straight to Chiron,” Annabeth decided. “Drew, would you—”

“Absolutely.” Drew laced her arm through mine. “This way, sweetie. I’ll introduce you to our director. He’s … an interesting guy.”

She directed me to the big blue house on the hill. I looked back at the lake. The crowd was beginning to disperse, and I saw Annabeth and Piper talking. Maybe Annabeth was going to give Piper the tour.

I let Drew lead the way. Director of the camp, huh? Maybe he’d know something about my problem?


	3. Seymour eats a ghost

As soon as I saw the house, I knew I was a dead man.

“Here we are!” Drew said cheerfully. “The Big House, camp headquarters.”

It didn’t look threatening, just a four-story manor painted baby blue with white trim. The wraparound porch had lounge chairs, a card table, and an empty wheelchair. Wind chimes shaped like nymphs turned into trees as they spun. I could imagine old people coming here for summer vacation, sitting on the porch and sipping prune juice while they watched the sunset. Still, the windows seemed to glare down at me like angry eyes. The wide open doorway looked ready to swallow me. On the highest gable, a bronze eagle weathervane spun in the wind and pointed straight in me direction, as if telling me to turn around.

The feeling of familiarity had been tainted by danger. Every molecule in my body told me I was on enemy ground.

“I am not supposed to be here,” I said.

Drew circled her arm through mine (again, I’d already rejected her once). “Oh, please. You’re perfect here, sweetie. Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of heroes.”

Drew smelled like Christmas—a strange combination of pine and nutmeg. I wondered if she always smelled like that, or if it was some kind of special perfume for the holidays. Her pink eyeliner was really distracting. Every time she blinked, I felt compelled to look at her. Maybe that was the point, to show off her warm brown eyes. She was pretty. No doubt about that. But she made me feel uncomfortable.

I slipped my arm away again as gently as I could. “Look, I appreciate—”

“Is it that girl?” Drew pouted. “Oh, please, tell me you are not dating the Dumpster Queen.”

“You mean Piper? Um …”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Piper before today, but I felt strangely guilty about it. I knew I shouldn’t be in this place. I shouldn’t befriend these people, and certainly I shouldn’t date one of them. Still … Piper had been holding my hand when I woke up on that bus. She believed she was my girlfriend. She’d been brave on the skywalk, fighting those venti, and when I had caught her in mid-air and we’d held each other face-to-face, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t a little tempted to kiss her. But that wasn’t right. I didn’t even know my own story. I couldn’t play with her emotions like that.

Drew rolled her eyes. “Let me help you decide, sweetie. You can do better. A guy with your looks and obvious talent?”

She wasn’t looking at me, though. She was staring at a spot right above my head.

“You’re waiting for a sign,” I guessed. “Like what popped over Leo’s head.”

“What? No! Well … yes. I mean, from what I heard, you’re pretty powerful, right? You’re going to be important at camp, so I figure your parent will claim you right away. And I’d love to see that. I wanna be with you every step of the way! So is your dad or mom the god? Please tell me it’s not your mom. I would hate it if you were an Aphrodite kid.”

“Why?”

“Then you’d be my half-brother, silly. You can’t date somebody from your own cabin. Yuck!”

“But aren’t all the gods related?” I asked. “So isn’t everyone here your cousin or something?”

“Aren’t you cute! Sweetie, the godly side of your family doesn’t count except for your parent. So anybody from another cabin—they’re fair game. So who’s your godly parent—mom or dad?”

As usual, I didn’t have an answer. I looked up, but no glowing sign popped above my head. At the top of the Big House, the weathervane was still pointing my direction, that bronze eagle glaring as if to say, _Turn around, kid, while you still can_.

Then I heard footsteps on the front porch. No—not footsteps—hooves.

“Chiron!” Drew called. “This is Jason. He’s totally awesome!”

I backed up so fast I almost tripped. Rounding the corner of the porch was a man on horseback. Except he wasn’t on horseback—he was part of the horse. From the waist up he was human, with curly brown hair and a well-trimmed beard. He wore a T-shirt that said _World’s Best Centaur_ , and had a quiver and bow strapped to his back. His head was so high up he had to duck to avoid the porch lights, because from the waist down, he was a white stallion.

Chiron started to smile. Then the color drained from his face.

“You …” The centaur’s eyes flared like a cornered animal’s. “You should be dead.”

Chiron ordered me —well, invited, but it sounded like an order— to come inside the house. He told Drew to go back to her cabin, which Drew didn’t look happy about.

The centaur trotted over to the empty wheelchair on the porch. He slipped off his quiver and bow and backed up to the chair, which opened like a magician’s box. Chiron gingerly stepped into it with his back legs and began scrunching himself into a space that should’ve been much too small. I imagined a truck’s reversing noises—beep, beep, beep—as the centaur’s lower half disappeared and the chair folded up, popping out a set of fake human legs covered in a blanket, so Chiron appeared to be a regular mortal guy in a wheelchair.

“Follow me,” he ordered. “We have lemonade.”

The living room looked like it had been swallowed by a rain forest. Grapevines curved up the walls and across the ceiling, which was a little strange. I didn’t think plants grew like that inside, especially in the winter, but these were leafy green and bursting with bunches of red grapes.

Leather couches faced a stone fireplace with a crackling fire. Wedged in one corner, an old-style Pac-Man arcade game beeped and blinked. Mounted on the walls was an assortment of masks—smiley/frowny Greek theatre types, feathered Mardi Gras masks, Venetian Carnevale masks with big beaklike noses, carved wooden masks from Africa. Grapevines grew through their mouths so they seemed to have leafy tongues. Some had red grapes bulging through their eyeholes.

But the weirdest thing was the stuffed leopard’s head above the fireplace. It looked so real, its eyes seemed to follow me. Then it snarled, and I nearly leaped out of my skin.

“Now, Seymour,” Chiron chided. “Jason is a friend. Behave yourself.”

“That thing is alive!”

Chiron rummaged through the side pocket of his wheelchair and brought out a package of sausages. He threw one to the leopard, who snapped it up and licked his lips.

“You must excuse the décor,” Chiron said. “All this was a parting gift from our old director before he was recalled to Mount Olympus. He thought it would help us to remember him. Mr. D has a strange sense of humor.”

“Mr. D,” I said. “Dionysus?”

“Mmm hmm.” Chiron poured lemonade, though his hands were trembling a little. “As for Seymour, well, Mr. D liberated him from a Long Island garage sale. The leopard is Mr. D’s sacred animal, you see, and Mr. D was appalled that someone would stuff such a noble creature. He decided to grant it life, on the assumption that life as a mounted head was better than no life at all. I must say it’s a kinder fate than Seymour’s previous owner got.”

Seymour bared his fangs and sniffed the air, as if hunting for more sausages.

“If he’s only a head,” I said, “where does the food go when he eats?”

“Better not to ask,” Chiron said. “Please, sit.”

I took some lemonade, though my stomach was fluttering. Chiron sat back in his wheelchair and tried for a smile, but I could tell it was forced. The old man’s eyes were as deep and dark as wells.

“So, Jason,” he said, “would you mind telling me—ah—where you’re from?”

“I wish I knew.”

I told him the whole story, from waking up on the bus to crash-landing at Camp Half-Blood. I didn’t see any point in hiding the details, and Chiron was a good listener. He didn’t react to the story, other than to nod encouragingly for more.

When I was done, the old man sipped his lemonade.

“I see,” Chiron said. “And you must have questions for me.”

“Only one,” I admitted. “What did you mean when you said that I should be dead?”

Chiron studied me with concern, as if he expected me to burst into flames. “My boy, do you know what those marks on your arm mean? The color of your shirt? Do you remember anything?”

I looked at the tattoo on my forearm: SPQR, the eagle, twelve straight lines.

“No,” I said. “Nothing.”

“Do you know where you are?” Chiron asked. “Do you understand what this place is, and who I am?”

“You’re Chiron the centaur,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re the same one from the old stories, who used to train the Greek heroes like Heracles. This is a camp for demigods, children of the Olympian gods.”

I managed to get all that out without thinking. My headache was receding.

“So you believe those gods still exist?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. “I mean, I don’t think we should worship them or sacrifice chickens to them or anything, but they’re still around because they’re a powerful part of civilization. They move from country to country as the center of power shifts—like they moved from Ancient Greece to Rome.”

“ _I couldn’t have said it better_.” Something about Chiron’s voice had changed. “ _So you already know the gods are real. You have already been claimed, haven’t you?_ ”

“ _Maybe,_ ” Jason answered. “ _I’m not really sure_.” 

I’m not sure about anything, I thought.

Seymour the leopard snarled. Chiron waited, and I realized what had just happened. The centaur had switched to another language and I had understood, automatically answering in the same tongue.

“Quis erat—” I faltered, then made a conscious effort to speak English. “What was that?”

“You know Latin,” Chiron observed. “Most demigods recognize a few phrases, of course. It’s in their blood, but not as much as Ancient Greek. None can speak Latin fluently without practice.”

I tried to wrap my mind around what that meant, but too many pieces were missing from my memory. I still had the feeling that I shouldn’t be here. It was wrong—and dangerous. But at least Chiron wasn’t threatening. In fact the centaur seemed concerned for me, afraid for my safety. Something in me said that it had been a long time since an adult had behaved like that toward me.

The fire reflected in Chiron’s eyes, making them dance fretfully. “I taught your namesake, you know, the original Jason. He had a hard path. I’ve seen many heroes come and go. Occasionally, they have happy endings. Mostly, they don’t. It breaks my heart, like losing a child each time one of my pupils dies. But you—you are not like any pupil I’ve ever taught. Your presence here could be a disaster.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You must be an inspiring teacher.”

“I am sorry, my boy. But it’s true. I had hoped that after Percy’s success—”

That name again. This guy had been everywhere.

“Percy Jackson, you mean. Annabeth’s boyfriend, the one who’s missing.”

Chiron nodded. “I hoped that after he succeeded in the Titan War and saved Mount Olympus, we might have some peace. I might be able to enjoy one final triumph, a happy ending, and perhaps retire quietly. I should have known better. The last chapter approaches, just as it did before. The worst is yet to come.”

In the corner, the arcade game made a sad pew-pew-pew-pew sound, like a Pac-Man had just died.

“Ohh-kay,” I said. “So—last chapter, happened before, worst yet to come. Sounds fun, but can we go back to the part where I’m supposed to be dead? I don’t like that part.”

“I’m afraid I can’t explain, my boy. I swore on the River Styx and on all things sacred that I would never …” Chiron frowned. “But you’re here, in violation of the same oath. That too, should not be possible. I don’t understand. Who would’ve done such a thing? Who—”

Seymour the leopard howled. His mouth froze, half open. The arcade game stopped beeping. The fire stopped crackling, its flames hardening like red glass. The masks stared down silently at me with their grotesque grape eyes and leafy tongues.

“Chiron?” I asked. “What’s going—”

The old centaur had frozen, too. I jumped off the couch, but Chiron kept staring at the same spot, his mouth open mid-sentence. His eyes didn’t blink. His chest didn’t move.

_Jason_ , a voice said.

For a horrible moment, I thought the leopard had spoken. Then dark mist boiled out of Seymour’s mouth, and I had an even worse idea: storm spirits. I grabbed the golden coin from my pocket. With a quick flip, it changed into a sword.

The mist took the form of a woman in black robes. Her face was hooded, but her eyes glowed in the darkness. Over her shoulders she wore a goatskin cloak. I wasn’t sure how I knew it was goatskin, but I recognized it and knew it was important.

_Would you attack your patron?_ the woman chided. Her voice echoed in my head. _Lower your sword._

“Who are you?” I demanded. “How did you—”

_Our time is limited, Jason. My prison grows stronger by the hour. It took me a full month to gather enough energy to work even the smallest magic through its bonds. I’ve managed to bring you here, but now I have little time left, and even less power. This may be the last time I can speak to you._

“You’re in prison?” I decided maybe I wouldn’t lower my sword. “Look, I don’t know you, and you’re not my patron.”

_You know me_ , she insisted. _I have known you since your birth_.

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.”

_No, you don’t_ , she agreed. _That also was necessary. Long ago, your father gave me your life as a gift to placate my anger. He named you Jason, after my favorite mortal. You belong to me._

“Whoa,” I said. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

_Now is the time to pay your debt_ , she said. _Find my prison. Free me, or their king will rise from the earth, and I will be destroyed. You will never retrieve your memory._

“Is that a threat? You took my memories?”

_You have until sunset on the solstice, Jason. Four short days. Do not fail me._

The dark woman dissolved, and the mist curled into the leopard’s mouth.

Time unfroze. Seymour’s howl turned into a cough like he’d sucked in a hair ball. The fire crackled to life, the arcade machine beeped, and Chiron said, “—would dare to bring you here?”

“Probably the lady in the mist,” I offered.

Chiron looked up in surprise. “Weren’t you just sitting … why do you have a sword drawn?”

“I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but I think your leopard just ate a goddess.”

I told Chiron about the frozen-in-time visit, the dark misty figure that disappeared into Seymour’s mouth.

“Oh, dear,” Chiron murmured. “That does explain a lot.”

“Then why don’t you explain a lot to me?” I said. “Please.”

Before Chiron could say anything, footsteps reverberated on the porch outside. The front door blew open, and Annabeth and another girl, a redhead, burst in, dragging Piper between them. Piper’s head lolled like she was unconscious.

“What happened?” I rushed over. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Hera’s cabin,” Annabeth gasped, like they’d run all the way. “Vision. Bad.”

The redheaded girl looked up, and I saw that she’d been crying.

“I think …” The redheaded girl gulped. “I think I may have killed her.”

The redhead (who’d introduced herself as Rachel) and I put Piper on the couch while Annabeth rushed down the hall to get a med kit. Piper was still breathing, but she wouldn’t wake up. She seemed to be in some kind of coma.

“We’ve got to heal her,” I insisted. “There’s a way, right?”

Seeing her so pale, barely breathing, I felt a surge of protectiveness. Maybe I didn’t really know her. Maybe she wasn’t my girlfriend. But we’d survived the Grand Canyon together. We’d come all this way. I’d left her side for a little while, and this had happened.

Chiron put his hand on her forehead and grimaced. “Her mind is in a fragile state. Rachel, what happened?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “As soon as I got to camp, I had a premonition about Hera’s cabin. I went inside. Annabeth and Piper came in while I was there. We talked, and then—I just blanked out. Annabeth said I spoke in a different voice.”

“A prophecy?” Chiron asked.

“No. The spirit of Delphi comes from within. I know how that feels. This was like long distance, a power trying to speak through me.”

Annabeth ran in with a leather pouch. She knelt next to Piper. “Chiron, what happened back there—I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve heard Rachel’s prophecy voice. This was different. She sounded like an older woman. She grabbed Piper’s shoulders and told her—”

“To free her from a prison?” I guessed.

Annabeth stared at me. “How did you know that?”

Chiron made a three-fingered gesture over his heart, like a ward against evil. “Jason, tell them. Annabeth, the medicine bag, please.”

Chiron trickled drops from a medicine vial into Piper’s mouth while I explained what had happened when the room froze—the dark misty woman who had claimed to be my patron. When I was done, no one spoke, which made me more anxious.

“So does this happen often?” I asked. “Supernatural phone calls from convicts demanding you bust them out of jail?” Somehow, I was sure that was weird.

“Your patron,” Annabeth said. “Not your godly parent?”

“No, she said patron. She also said my dad had given her my life.”

Annabeth frowned. “I’ve never of heard anything like that before. You said the storm spirit on the skywalk—he claimed to be working for some mistress who was giving him orders, right? Could it be this woman you saw, messing with your mind?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “If she were my enemy, why would she be asking for my help? She’s imprisoned. She’s worried about some enemy getting more powerful. Something about a king rising from the earth on the solstice—”

Annabeth turned to Chiron. “Not Kronos. Please tell me it’s not that.”

The centaur looked miserable. He held Piper’s wrist, checking her pulse. At last he said, “It is not Kronos. That threat is ended. But …”

“But what?” Annabeth asked.

Chiron closed the medicine bag. “Piper needs rest. We should discuss this later.”

“Or now,” I said. “Sir, Mr. Chiron, you told me the greatest threat was coming. The last chapter. You can’t possibly mean something worse than an army of Titans, right?”

“Oh,” Rachel said in a small voice. “Oh, dear. The woman was Hera. Of course. Her cabin, her voice. She showed herself to Jason at the same moment.”

“Hera?” Annabeth’s snarl was even fiercer than Seymour’s. “She took you over? She did this to Piper?”

“I think Rachel’s right,” I said. “The woman did seem like a goddess. And she wore this—this goatskin cloak. That’s a symbol of Juno, isn’t it?”

“It is?” Annabeth scowled. “I’ve never heard that.”

Chiron nodded reluctantly. “Of Juno, Hera’s Roman aspect, in her most warlike state. The goatskin cloak was a symbol of the Roman soldier.”

“So Hera is imprisoned?” Rachel asked. “Who could do that to the queen of the gods?”

Annabeth crossed her arms. “Well, whoever they are, maybe we should thank them. If they can shut up Hera—”

“Annabeth,” Chiron warned, “she is still one of the Olympians. In many ways, she is the glue that holds the gods’ family together. If she truly has been imprisoned and is in danger of destruction, this could shake the foundations of the world. It could unravel the stability of Olympus, which is never great even in the best of times. And if Hera has asked Jason for help—”

“Fine,” Annabeth grumbled. “Well, we know Titans can capture a god, right? Atlas captured Artemis a few years ago. And in the old stories, the gods captured each other in traps all the time. But something worse than a Titan …?”

I looked at the leopard’s head. Seymour was smacking his lips like the goddess had tasted much better than a sausage.

“Hera said she’d been trying to break through her prison bonds for a month.”

“Which is how long Olympus has been closed,” Annabeth said. “So the gods must know something bad is going on.”

“But why use her energy to send me here?” I asked. “She wiped my memory, plopped me into the Wilderness School field trip, and sent you a dream vision to come pick me up. Why am I so important? Why not just send up an emergency flare to the other gods—let them know where she is so they bust her out?”

“The gods need heroes to do their will down here on earth,” Rachel said. “That’s right, isn’t it? Their fates are always intertwined with demigods.”

“That’s true,” Annabeth said, “but Jason’s got a point. Why him? Why take his memory?”

“And Piper’s involved somehow,” Rachel said. “Hera sent her the same message—Free me. And, Annabeth, this must have something to do with Percy’s disappearing.”

Annabeth fixed her eyes on Chiron. “Why are you so quiet, Chiron? What is it we’re facing?”

The old centaur’s face looked like it had aged ten years in a matter of minutes. The lines around his eyes were deeply etched. “My dear, in this, I cannot help you. I am so sorry.”

Annabeth blinked. “You’ve never … you’ve never kept information from me. Even the last great prophecy—”

“I will be in my office.” His voice was heavy. “I need some time to think before dinner. Rachel, will you watch the girl? Call Argus to bring her to the infirmary, if you’d like. And Annabeth, you should speak with Jason. Tell him about—about the Greek and Roman gods.”

“But …”

The centaur turned his wheelchair and rolled off down the hallway. Annabeth’s eyes turned stormy. She muttered something in Greek, and I got the feeling it wasn’t complimentary toward centaurs.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I think my being here—I don’t know. I’ve messed things up coming to the camp, somehow. Chiron said he’d sworn an oath and couldn’t talk about it.”

“What oath?” Annabeth demanded. “I’ve never seen him act this way. And why would he tell me to talk to you about the gods...”

Her voice trailed off. Apparently she’d just noticed my sword sitting on the coffee table. She touched the blade gingerly, like it might be hot.

“Is this gold?” she said. “Do you remember where you got it?”

“No,” I said. “Like I said, I don’t remember anything.”

Annabeth nodded, like she’d just come up with a rather desperate plan. “If Chiron won’t help, we’ll need to figure things out ourselves. Which means … Cabin Fifteen. Rachel, you’ll keep an eye on Piper?”

“Sure,” Rachel promised. “Good luck, you two.”

“Hold on,” I said. “What’s in Cabin Fifteen?”

Annabeth stood. “Maybe a way to get your memory back.”

We headed toward a newer wing of cabins in the southwest corner of the green. Some were fancy, with glowing walls or blazing torches, but Cabin Fifteen was not so dramatic. It looked like an old-fashioned prairie house with mud walls and a rush roof. On the door hung a wreath of crimson flowers —red poppies, I thought, though I wasn’t sure how I knew.

“You think this is my parent’s cabin?” I asked.

“No,” Annabeth said. “This is the cabin for Hypnos, the god of sleep.”

“Then why—”

“You’ve forgotten everything,” she said. “If there’s any god who can help us figure out memory loss, it’s Hypnos.”

Inside, even though it was almost dinnertime, three kids were sound asleep under piles of covers. A warm fire crackled in the hearth. Above the mantel hung a tree branch, each twig dripping white liquid into a collection of tin bowls. I was tempted to catch a drop on his finger just to see what it was, but I held myself back.

Soft violin music played from somewhere. The air smelled like fresh laundry. The cabin was so cozy and peaceful that my eyelids started to feel heavy. A nap sounded like a great idea. I was exhausted. There were plenty of empty beds, all with feather pillows and fresh sheets and fluffy quilts and —Annabeth nudged me. “Snap out of it.”

I blinked. I realized my knees had been starting to buckle.

“Cabin Fifteen does that to everyone,” Annabeth warned. “If you ask me, this place is even more dangerous than the Ares cabin. At least with Ares, you can learn where the land mines are.”

“Land mines?”

She walked up to the nearest snoring kid and shook his shoulder. “Clovis! Wake up!”

The kid looked like a baby cow. He had a blond tuft of hair on a wedge-shaped head, with thick features and a thick neck. His body was stocky, but he had spindly little arms like he’d never lifted anything heavier than a pillow.

“Clovis!” Annabeth shook harder, then finally knocked on his forehead about six times.

“Wh-wh-what?” Clovis complained, sitting up and squinting. He yawned hugely, and both Annabeth and I yawned too.

“Stop that!” Annabeth said. “We need your help.”

“I was sleeping.”

“You’re always sleeping.”

“Good night.”

Before he could pass out, Annabeth yanked his pillow off the bed.

“That’s not fair,” Clovis complained meekly. “Give it back.”

“First help,” Annabeth said. “Then sleep.”

Clovis sighed. His breath smelled like warm milk. “Fine. What?”

Annabeth explained about my problem. Every once in a while she’d snap her fingers under Clovis’s nose to keep him awake.

Clovis must have been really excited, because when Annabeth was done, he didn’t pass out. He actually stood and stretched, then blinked at me.

“So you don’t remember anything, huh?”

“Just impressions,” I said. “Feelings, like …”

“Yes?” Clovis said.

“Like I know I shouldn’t be here. At this camp. I’m in danger.”

“Hmm. Close your eyes.”

I glanced at Annabeth, but she nodded reassuringly. I was afraid I’d end up snoring in one of the bunks forever, but I closed my eyes. My thoughts became murky, as if I were sinking into a dark lake.

The next thing I knew, my eyes snapped open. I was sitting in a chair by the fire. Clovis and Annabeth knelt next to me.

“—serious, all right,” Clovis was saying.

“What happened?” I said. “How long—”

“Just a few minutes,” Annabeth said. “But it was tense. You almost dissolved.”

I hoped she didn’t mean literally, but her expression was solemn.

“Usually,” Clovis said, “memories are lost for a good reason. They sink under the surface like dreams, and with a good sleep, I can bring them back. But this …”

“Lethe?” Annabeth asked.

“No,” Clovis said. “Not even Lethe.”

“Lethe?” I asked.

Clovis pointed to the tree branch dripping milky drops above the fireplace. “The River Lethe in the Underworld. It dissolves your memories, wipes your mind clean permanently. That’s the branch of a poplar tree from the Underworld, dipped into the Lethe. It’s the symbol of my father, Hypnos. Lethe is not a place you want to go swimming.”

Annabeth nodded. “Percy went there once. He told me it was powerful enough to wipe the mind of a Titan.”

I was suddenly glad I hadn’t touched the branch. “But … that’s not my problem?”

“No,” Clovis agreed. “Your mind wasn’t wiped, and your memories weren’t buried. They’ve been stolen.”

The fire crackled. Drops of Lethe water plinked into the tin cups on the mantel. One of the other Hypnos campers muttered in his sleep—something about a duck.

“Stolen,” I said. “How?”

“A god,” Clovis said. “Only a god would have that kind of power.”

“We know that,” I said. “It was Juno. But how did she do it, and why?”

Clovis scratched his neck. “Juno?”

“He means Hera,” Annabeth said. “For some reason, Jason likes the Roman names.”

“Hmm,” Clovis said.

“What?” I asked. “Does that mean something?”

“Hmm,” Clovis said again, and this time I realized he was snoring.

“Clovis!” I yelled.

“What? What?” His eyes fluttered open. “We were talking about pillows, right? No, gods. I remember. Greek and Roman. Sure, could be important.”

“But they’re the same gods,” Annabeth said. “Just different names.”

“Not exactly,” Clovis said. I sat forward, now very much awake. Finally, something that could lead to my memories.

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“Well …” Clovis yawned. “Some gods are only Roman. Like Janus, or Pompona. But even the major Greek gods—it’s not just their names that changed when they moved to Rome. Their appearances changed. Their attributes changed. They even had slightly different personalities.”

“But …” Annabeth faltered. “Okay, so maybe people saw them differently through the centuries. That doesn’t change who they are.”

“Sure it does.” Clovis began to nod off, and I snapped my fingers under his nose.

“Coming, Mother!” he yelped. “I mean … Yeah, I’m awake. So, um, personalities. The gods change to reflect their host cultures. You know that, Annabeth. I mean, these days, Zeus likes tailored suits, reality television, and that Chinese food place on East Twenty-eighth Street, right? It was the same in Roman times, and the gods were Roman almost as long as they were Greek. It was a big empire, lasted for centuries. So of course their Roman aspects are still a big part of their character.”

It made sense.

Annabeth shook her head, mystified. “But how do you know all this, Clovis?”

“Oh, I spend a lot of time dreaming. I see the gods there all the time—always shifting forms. Dreams are fluid, you know. You can be in different places at once, always changing identities. It’s a lot like being a god, actually. Like recently, I dreamed I was watching a Michael Jackson concert, and then I was onstage with Michael Jackson, and we were singing this duet, and I could not remember the words for ‘The Girl Is Mine.’ Oh, man, it was so embarrassing, I—”

“Clovis,” Annabeth interrupted. “Back to Rome?”

“Right, Rome,” Clovis said. “So we call the gods by their Greek names because that’s their original form. But saying their Roman aspects are exactly the same—that’s not true. In Rome, they became more warlike. They didn’t mingle with mortals as much. They were harsher, more powerful—the gods of an empire.”

“Like the dark side of the gods?” Annabeth asked.

“Not exactly,” Clovis said. “They stood for discipline, honor, strength—”

“Good things, then,” I said. For some reason, I felt the need to speak up for the Roman gods, though I wasn’t sure why it mattered to me. “I mean, discipline is important, right? That’s what made Rome last so long.”

Clovis gave me a curious look. “That’s true. But the Roman gods weren’t very friendly. For instance, my dad, Hypnos … he didn’t do much except sleep in Greek times. In Roman times, they called him Somnus. He liked killing people who didn’t stay alert at their jobs. If they nodded off at the wrong time, boom—they never woke up. He killed the helmsman of Aeneas when they were sailing from Troy.”

“Nice guy,” Annabeth said. “But I still don’t understand what it has to do with Jason.”

“Neither do I,” Clovis said. “But if Hera took your memory, only she can give it back. And if I had to meet the queen of the gods, I’d hope she was more in a Hera mood than a Juno mood. Can I go back to sleep now?”

Annabeth stared at the branch above the fire, dripping Lethe water into the cups. She looked so worried, I wondered if she was considering a drink to forget her troubles.

Then she stood and tossed Clovis his pillow. “Thanks, Clovis. We’ll see you at dinner.”

“Can I get room service?” Clovis yawned and stumbled to his bunk. “I feel like … zzzz …” He collapsed with his butt in the air and his face buried in pillow.

“Won’t he suffocate?” I asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Annabeth said. “But I’m beginning to think that you are in serious trouble.”

Honestly? I agreed with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to skip Leo and Piper's chapters because Jason wasn't there, but I'll include the backstories later on! I'm working on chapter four already, and I'm trying to include as much as I can


	4. I assemble the Avengers

Annabeth decided that she’d give me the tour herself, since I hadn’t got one. I tried to tell her that it wasn’t necessary, because she looked like she was about to drop, but she insisted.

Still, I could tell that her heart wasn’t in the tour. She talked about all this amazing stuff the camp offered—magic archery, pegasus riding, the lava wall, fighting monsters —but she showed no excitement, as if her mind were elsewhere. She pointed out the open-air dining pavilion that overlooked Long Island Sound. (Yes, Long Island, New York; we’d traveled that far on the chariot.)

Annabeth explained how Camp Half-Blood was mostly a summer camp, but some kids stayed here year-round, and they’d added so many campers it was always crowded now, even in winter. She stared at me for a second, and when I didn’t ask any questions, she kept going.

To be honest, I wasn’t that curious about what you could do in Camp Half-Blood. The whole place felt familiar and dangerous all at once, and it seemed different every time I blinked. The volleyball pitch was dark and threatening, despite the kids playing in it. The climbing wall looked interesting, and I had the urge to try it. The dinner pavilion seemed to be welcoming with open arms, but the boats in the pier stared at me in anger.

Annabeth fell silent as we climbed a hill at the edge of camp. I got an amazing view of the valley—a big stretch of woods to the northwest, a beautiful beach, the creek, the canoe lake, lush green fields, and the whole layout of the cabins—a bizarre assortment of buildings arranged like a Greek omega, Ω, with a loop of cabins around a central green, and two wings sticking out the bottom on either side.

I counted twenty cabins in all. One glowed golden, another silver. One had grass on the roof. Another was bright red with barbed wire trenches. One cabin was black with fiery green torches out front. All of it seemed like a different world from the snowy hills and fields outside.

“The valley is protected from mortal eyes,” Annabeth said. “As you can see, the weather is controlled, too. Each cabin represents a Greek god—a place for that god’s children to live.”

She looked at me like she was trying to judge how I was handling it.

“I think I may have been claimed already,” I muttered.

“We should know soon,” Annabeth said. “You’re what—fifteen? Gods are supposed to claim you when you’re thirteen. That was the deal.”

“The deal?”

“They made a promise last summer … well, long story… but they promised not to ignore their demigod children anymore, to claim them by the time they turn thirteen. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but you saw how fast Leo was claimed once he got here. Should happen for you soon. Tonight at the campfire, I bet we’ll get a sign. And if you’ve already been claimed…well, maybe Hera will do something. We know that she took your memories, so hopefully she’ll tell you when you rescue her.”

She didn’t sound particularly hopeful.

“You don’t like her, huh?”

Annabeth grimaced. “We have a complicated history. Let’s just say that she’s not my favorite goddess.”

She looked so tired that I decided to give her a break.

“Why thirteen?”

Annabeth seemed relieved to drop the subject. “The older you get,” she said, “the more monsters notice you, try to kill you. ’Round thirteen is usually when it starts. That’s why we send protectors into the schools to find you guys, get you to camp before it’s too late.”

“Like Coach Hedge?”

Annabeth nodded. “He’s—he was a satyr: half man, half goat. Satyrs work for the camp, finding demigods, protecting them, bringing them in when the time is right.”

That sounded slightly weird. Not like I was supposed to know it. Just…out of place. But Coach Hedge had really tried to protect us. Maybe I was being paranoid. I winced. My head seriously wouldn’t stop hurting. Even when I thought it was done, the pain came back.

“It’ll be okay,” Annabeth promised. “You have friends here. We’ve all been through a lot of weird stuff. We may not know what you’re going through, but we will help you figure it out.”

I gave her a small smile. She was so busy with her own problems, and she’d been taking her time to make me, Piper and Leo feel welcome.

“I want to help you find your boyfriend,” I said. “Rachel said I was related to it. I’m going to help look for him.”

Annabeth sighed. She sat down on a rock, like someone had cut the strings that sustained her. Her expression was so full of pain, I felt like a voyeur. I sat next to her in silence, and made a point of looking ahead, and not at her. She didn’t say a word.

My eyes drifted to the crest of the hill, where a single pine tree dominated the skyline. Something glittered in its lowest branch—like a fuzzy gold bathmat. No … not a bathmat. It was a sheep’s fleece.

I blinked. I hadn’t expected them to have the actual Golden Fleece just hanging there in a hilltop.

Then I noticed the base of the tree. At first I thought it was wrapped in a pile of massive purple cables. But the cables had reptilian scales, clawed feet, and a snakelike head with yellow eyes and smoking nostrils.

I whistled in appreciation. “You guys have the Golden Fleece and a dragon protecting it? That’s really cool.”

Annabeth nodded, but it was clear she wasn’t really listening. Her shoulders drooped. She rubbed her face and took a shaky breath.

“Sorry. A little tired.”

“You look ready to drop,” I said. “How long have you been searching for Percy?”

“Three days, eight hours, and about twelve minutes.”

“And you’ve got no idea what happened to him?”

Annabeth shook her head miserably. “We were so excited because we both started winter break early. We met up at camp on Tuesday, figured we had three weeks together. It was going to be great. Then after the campfire, he—he kissed me good night, went back to his cabin, and in the morning, he was gone. We searched the whole camp. We contacted his mom. We’ve tried to reach him every way we know how. Nothing. He just disappeared.”

My brain was going off again, but this time it wasn’t about my memories. Percy Jackson had disappeared three days before I appeared at the Wilderness School. Rachel had said that they were related.

“How did you know to come get us at the Great Canyon?”

Annabeth rubbed her eyes.

“Sorry,” I said. “You must have had this conversation a ton of times already.”

“No, it’s okay. I got this weird dream vision from Hera, telling me to go get a demigod with one shoe. I thought-”

“You thought that it would be Percy.”

She nodded. “It was just so strange, because Olympus has been closed for a month, you know? Well, it’s normal for the gods not to talk to their children very much, but usually we can count on some messages now and then. Some of us can even visit Olympus. I spent practically all semester at the Empire State Building.”

“Excuse me?”

“The entrance to Mount Olympus these days.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure, why not?”

“Anyway,” Annabeth said, “starting about a month ago, Olympus fell silent. The entrance closed, and no one could get in. Nobody knows why. It’s like the gods have sealed themselves off. Even my mom won’t answer my prayers, and our camp director, Dionysus, was recalled. Demigods still get claimed, but nothing else. No messages. No visits. No sign the gods are even listening. It’s like something has happened —something really bad. Then Percy disappeared.”

“And Hera sent you that vision.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth said. “The first communication from a god in a month, and it’s Hera, the least helpful goddess, and she contacts me, her least favorite demigod. She tells me I’ll find out what happened to Percy if I go to the Grand Canyon skywalk and look for a guy with one shoe. Instead, I find you guys, and the guy I’m supposed to look like is you.”

I didn’t know what to say. She looked so devastated, no word was going to make her feel better. I took the coin out of my pocket and began playing with it, giving her time to collect herself. The sky got darker.

Finally, Annabeth got up.

“We should get going to the pavilion,” she said. “It’s almost dinner time.”

We walked down the hill. She started explaining how, since we didn’t know who my godly parent was, I had to stay with cabin 11.

“They’re they kids of Hermes. He’s the god of travelers, so they welcome all the unclaimed campers. In summer, their cabin is completely full, but now it’s not that bad.”

She dropped me off at the door and left to go with her siblings. I looked around the common area, but there was no sign of Leo. I guessed he’d be with the Vulcan – no, Hephaestus – kids. They had families that took care of them.

If only I knew where mine was.

Dinner with the Hermes kids was nice. The table was full, but there was enough room for all of us, and they didn’t stop talking or laughing the whole time. The head counselors, Travis and Connor, jumped from one subject to the next so quickly that I could barely follow them.

Everyone introduced themselves quickly: Jonas, Everly, Enoch, Lupe, Bernardo, Polly. It was almost impossible to remember them all, but I tried. Most were younger than me, all with a mischievous glint in their eyes. Lupe nudged me on the arm.

“Keep your wallet in sight,” she said. Enoch tried to steal a piece of bacon from her plate, and she smacked his hand without even looking. “Hermes kids are the worst.”

Enoch stuck his tongue out at her, and she made a face. Their cabinmates laughed. It really was like Annabeth had said. A big family of demigod kids.

Piper was nowhere to be seen, but Leo sat at the table next to ours, with the Hephaestus bunch. He gave me a thumbs up. A little boy with brown skin and dark brown, curly hair, seemed to be talking his ear off at the moment. Next to him, a Latina girl with her hair wrapped in a red bandanna directed the conversation.

Lupe saw me looking at them and clicked her tongue.

“The new Hephaestus kid is your friend, right?”

I nodded. “His name is Leo.”

Lupe wore her curly blond hair in pigtails, that contrasted with her black skin. She must have been eleven or twelve years old, which explained why she hadn’t been claimed yet. She examined Leo with a thoughtful look.

“I hope your friend can help with the curse,” she said.

“Curse?”

Lupe nodded seriously, biting down on her food. “Cabin nine is cursed ever since Beckendorf died,” she whispered, so that Travis and Connor wouldn’t hear her. “I don’t know who he was, but everybody loved him. He was their head counselor.”

I stole a glance at table nine. I had thought that Leo’s siblings all looked happy, but if I paid more attention, I could see bags under their eyes and shoulders sagged.

“Beckendorf had a metal dragon,” said Lupe. “It’s huge, and it spits fire and drinks oil. It helped protect the camp, but it went crazy after Beckendorf died. Jake Mason tried to talk to it, and the dragon almost killed him. Now they’re trying to kill it, but they haven’t trapped it yet.”

I had the feeling that Leo would hate that idea. He was constantly building things: if there was an automaton that looked like a dragon, he’d want to take a look at it. Maybe even adopt it. I imagined Leo walking the metallic dragon, pulling it on a huge leash. Would he want it to sleep at his feet on the bed?

Lupe nudged me again. “You aren’t listening.”

“Sorry. I was thinking about the dragon.”

Lupe rolled her eyes. “Cabin nine has to kill it, not us. They have to kill it so it can end their curse. Christopher says that if he and his siblings kill the dragon, their inventions won’t go bad anymore.”

So that was the curse. Everything that the Hephaestus kids built was going haywire, and they wanted to fix this one thing that Beckendorf had left them. They hoped that then, they would be okay.

I looked at Leo again. His siblings may be sad, but I thought he would be fine with them. Something told me he was tougher than he made himself out to be.

I turned back to my food and the conversation around me. After the day I’d had, I was starving.

The campfire, as almost everything in Camp Half-Blood, was familiar, and yet not quite right. I wished I could swat those instincts away. I was too tired for constant alert.

I went to sit with Lupe and the others, but Annabeth stopped me.

“Come to the front,” she said, grabbing me by the arm. “We’re going to talk a few things, you shouldn’t be here at the back.”

I didn’t like the idea of being the center of attention, but then again, it didn’t feel strange. Whoever I was, I was used to front rows and uncomfortable looks. I squared my shoulders and went to sit with Annabeth.

My spot had a wonderful advantage for public speaking: I could face the entire amphitheater from there. The seats were carved into the side of the hill, facing a stone-lined fire-pit. Fifty or sixty kids filled the rows, clustered into groups under their cabin banners. I saw a boar head, an owl, a caduceus, a sun. The symbols of the gods. Leo sat with his siblings under a steel gray banner emblazoned with a hammer.

Half a dozen Apollo kids positioned themselves in front of the fire. They carried old-fashioned harps (maybe lyres? I knew mythology, but my brain didn’t seem particularly versed in music instruments), and they started singing a song about how their grandma got dressed for the war. Everybody followed along.

I saw Piper and Rachel arrive and sit at the other end of our row. Piper was still pale, but she had a weird look on her face, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The whole amphitheater must look ridiculous, singing and making gestures for the armor parts, talking and laughing around. It was one of those songs that would have been embarrassing in daylight; but in the dark, with everybody participating, it was kind of corny and fun. As the energy level got higher, the flames did too, turning from red to orange to gold.

Finally the song ended with a lot of rowdy applause. Even Annabeth managed a smile.

Chiron trotted up, brandishing a spear impaled with toasted marshmallows. I turned to Annabeth, amazed.

“Do you always use weapons for campfires?”

“Sometimes,” she said, fidgeting with her camp necklace. “Only if we’re up for cleaning them later.”

“Very nice!” exclaimed Chiron. The Apollo kids went back to their seats. “And a special welcome to our new arrivals. I am Chiron, camp activities director, and I’m happy you have all arrived here alive and with most of your limbs attached. In a moment, I promise we’ll get to the s’mores, but first—”

“What about capture the flag?” somebody yelled.

Grumbling broke out among some kids in armor, sitting under a red banner with the emblem of a boar’s head. Mars, I realized. I couldn’t remember what his Greek name was.

“Yes,” the centaur said. “I know the Ares cabin is anxious to return to the woods for our regular games.”

Ares. Right. That was it.

“And kill people!” one of them shouted.

“However,” Chiron said, “until the dragon is brought under control, that won’t be possible. Cabin Nine, anything to report on that?” He turned to Leo’s group.

I saw Leo wink at someone in the front row and shoot with a finger gun. I guessed it must be Piper. The girl with the red bandanna stood up uncomfortably.

“We’re working on it.”

More grumbling.

“How, Nyssa?” an Ares kid demanded.

“Really hard,” she said. Nyssa sat down to a lot of yelling and complaining, which caused the fire to sputter chaotically. Chiron stamped his hoof against the fire pit stones —bang, bang, bang—and the campers fell silent.

“We will have to be patient,” Chiron said. “In the meantime, we have more pressing matters to discuss.”

“Percy?” someone asked. The fire dimmed even further, but I didn’t need the mood flames to sense the crowd’s anxiety.

Chiron gestured to Annabeth. She took a deep breath and stood.

“I didn’t find Percy,” she announced. Her voice caught a little when she said his name. “He wasn’t at the Grand Canyon like I thought. But we’re not giving up. We’ve got teams everywhere. Grover, Tyson, Nico, the Hunters of Artemis —everyone’s out looking. We will find him. Chiron’s talking about something different. A new quest.”

“It’s the Great Prophecy, isn’t it?” a girl called out.

Everyone turned. The voice had come from a group in back, sitting under a rose-colored banner with a dove emblem. They’d been chatting among themselves and not paying much attention until their leader stood up: Drew.

Everyone else looked surprised. Apparently Drew didn’t address the crowd very often.

“Drew?” Annabeth said. “What do you mean?”

“Well, come on.” Drew spread her hands like the truth was obvious. “Olympus is closed. Percy’s disappeared. Hera sends you a vision and you come back with three new demigods in one day. I mean, something weird is going on. The Great Prophecy has started, right?”

The Great Prophecy. I noticed a buzz of electricity in my fingers. What was this about?

Everyone was looking at Rachel.

“Well?” Drew called down. “You’re the oracle. Has it started or not?”

Rachel’s eyes looked scary in the firelight. She stepped forward calmly and addressed the camp.

“Yes,” she said. “The Great Prophecy has begun.”

Pandemonium broke out. I noticed Piper staring at me and mouthed, _You all right?_

She nodded and gave a smile that looked a bit forced, but then she looked away and I couldn’t ask anything else.

When the talking finally subsided, Rachel took another step toward the audience, and fifty-plus demigods leaned away from her, as if one skinny redheaded mortal was more intimidating than all of them put together.

“For those of you who have not heard it,” Rachel said, “the Great Prophecy was my first prediction. It arrived in August. It goes like this:

“ _Seven half-bloods shall answer the call. To storm or fire the world must fall—_ ”

Electricity ran through me in a flash.

I shot to my feet. All of my limbs were shaking with thousands of watts. I had no idea what I was doing. But this was important. I’d heard this.

I spoke, barely knowing what I was saying. The words seemed to come from a far place, deep inside my mind.

“ _Ut cum spiritu postrema sacramentum dejuremus_ ,” I chanted. My thoughts were too fast for me. I had to finish the sentence, or the charge would make me explode. “ _Et hostes ornamenta addent ad ianuam necem_.”

An uneasy silence settled on the group. I lost all the energy, and almost flopped to the floor, but managed to stay upright. I looked at my hands, almost expecting to see lighting crackling in between my fingers.

Maybe I did know who my godly parent was.

I braved a look at everyone else. No one spoke. Annabeth’s frown was deeper than this morning on the Great Canyon. Rachel’s mouth was hanging open. Chiron’s face reflected the shadows the fire cast. Piper looked scared. Leo, shocked.

“You just … finished the prophecy,” Rachel stammered. “— _An oath to keep with a final breath_ / _And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death_. How did you—”

“I know those lines.” I winced and put my hands to my temples. My mind was screaming. How had I known that? “I don’t know how, but I know that prophecy.”

“In Latin, no less,” Drew called out. “Handsome and smart.”

There was some giggling from the Aphrodite cabin. I closed my eyes. I was not in the mood to deal with Drew’s comments.

I sat down, wishing they would all just disappear and I could find a way to make my head stop aching. The campfire burned a chaotic, nervous shade of green.

Annabeth put a hand on my shoulder.

“Forget about them,” she muttered. “In the worst case, this is another clue. We just have to figure out what it means.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t really listening. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. Breathe, Jason. In and out, three times. Slowly. I tried not to ask why I knew calming exercises, and failed.

Rachel still looked a little shaken. She glanced back at Chiron for guidance, but the centaur stood grim and silent, as if he were watching a play he couldn’t interrupt—a tragedy that ended with a lot of people dead onstage.

“Well,” Rachel said, trying to regain her composure. “So, yeah, that’s the Great Prophecy. We hoped it might not happen for years, but I fear it’s starting now. I can’t give you proof. It’s just a feeling. And like Drew said, some weird stuff is happening. The seven demigods, whoever they are, have not been gathered yet. I get the feeling some are here tonight. Some are not here.”

The campers began to stir and mutter, looking at each other nervously, until a drowsy voice in the crowd called out,

“I’m here! Oh … were you calling roll?”

“Go back to sleep, Clovis,” someone yelled, and a lot of people laughed. I managed a smile. I couldn’t break down in front of all these people.

“Anyway,” Rachel continued, “we don’t know what the Great Prophecy means. We don’t know what challenge the demigods will face, but since the first Great Prophecy predicted the Titan War, we can guess the second Great Prophecy will predict something at least that bad.”

“Or worse,” Chiron murmured. Maybe he didn’t mean everyone to overhear, but they did. The campfire immediately turned dark purple, even darker than my t-shirt.

“What we do know,” Rachel said, “is that the first phase has begun. A major problem has arisen, and we need a quest to solve it. Hera, the queen of the gods, has been taken.”

Shocked silence. Then fifty demigods started talking at once. Chiron pounded his hoof again, but Rachel still had to wait before she could get back their attention.

She told them about the incident on the Grand Canyon skywalk—how Gleeson Hedge had sacrificed himself when the storm spirits attacked, and the spirits had warned it was only the beginning. They apparently served some great mistress who would destroy all demigods.

Then Rachel told them about Piper passing out in Hera’s cabin. I turned to look at her. She was trying to look calm, but I could tell she was nervous. I should know, I was doing the same thing.

In the back row, Drew pantomimed a faint, making her friends giggle. I wanted to yell at them, but Piper ignored the taunt. I tried to relax in my seat. Piper didn’t want us to fight her battles for her. That’s what Leo had said.

Finally, Rachel told them about my vision in the living room of the Big House.

“Jason,” Rachel said. “Um … do you remember your last name?”

I shook my head, trying not to squirm under everyone’s gaze. Fifty people looking at you like you’re an alien isn’t exactly my idea of fun.

“We’ll just call you Jason, then,” Rachel said. “It’s clear Hera herself has issued you a quest.”

Rachel paused, as if giving me a chance to protest his destiny. This seemed familiar, too, like I’d been given this chance before. I knew how to act here.

I set my jaw and nodded. “I agree.”

“You must save Hera to prevent a great evil,” Rachel continued. “Some sort of king from rising. For reasons we don’t yet understand, it must happen by the winter solstice, only four days from now.”

“That’s the council day of the gods,” Annabeth said. “If the gods don’t already know Hera’s gone, they will definitely notice her absence by then. They’ll probably break out fighting, accusing each other of taking her. That’s what they usually do.”

I liked the sarcasm in her voice.

“The winter solstice,” Chiron spoke up, “is also the time of greatest darkness. The gods gather that day, as mortals always have, because there is strength in numbers. The solstice is a day when evil magic is strong. Ancient magic, older than the gods. It is a day when things … stir.”

The way he said it, stirring sounded absolutely sinister—like it should be a first-degree felony, not something you did to cookie dough.

“Okay,” Annabeth said, glaring at the centaur. “Thank you, Captain Sunshine. Whatever’s going on, I agree with Rachel. Jason has been chosen to lead this quest, so—”

“Why hasn’t he been claimed?” somebody yelled from the Ares cabin. “If he’s so important—”

“He has been claimed,” Chiron announced. “Long ago. Jason, give them a demonstration.”

I had not been expecting that. Sure, I had an idea, but if I was wrong…

I stepped forward. This is the second time you get in front of the fire, and you’ve already freaked them out, I thought. You can’t possibly make it worse.

I took a deep breath and faced the crowd.

Now that I was psyched to do it, standing in front of fifty demigods felt even more familiar, and I noticed that part of the tension had left me. I glanced at Piper, and she nodded encouragingly. She mimicked flipping a coin. Good thinking.

I reached into my pocket, and threw the coin in the air.

When I caught it in my hand, I was holding a lance—a rod of gold about seven feet long, with a spear tip at one end. The other demigods gasped. Rachel and Annabeth stepped back to avoid the point, which looked sharp as an ice pick.

“Wasn’t that …” Annabeth hesitated. “I thought you had a sword.”

“Um, it came up tails, I think,” I said. “Same coin, long-range weapon form.”

“Dude, I want one!” yelled somebody from Ares cabin.

“Better than Clarisse’s electric spear, Lamer!” one of his brothers agreed.

“Electric,” I murmured. That gave me an idea. “Back away.”

Annabeth and Rachel got the message.

I raised my javelin, and thunder broke open the sky. Every hair on my arms stood straight up. Lightning arced down through the golden spear point and hit the campfire with the force of an artillery shell.

When the smoke cleared, the entire camp sat frozen in shock, half blind, covered in ashes, staring at the place where the fire had been. Cinders rained down everywhere. A burning log had impaled itself a few inches from Clovis, who hadn’t even stirred.

I lowered the lance, trying not to look like I’d enjoyed that too much. “Um … sorry.”

Chiron brushed some burning coals out of his beard. He grimaced as if his worst fears had been confirmed. “A little overkill, perhaps, but you’ve made your point. And I believe we know who your father is.”

This time, the answer wasn’t just an instinct.

“Jupiter,” I said. “I mean, Zeus. Lord of the Sky.”

Another second of silence, and everything broke into chaos, with dozens of people asking questions until Annabeth raised her arms.

“Hold it!” she said. “How can he be the son of Zeus? The Big Three … their pact not to have mortal kids … how could we not have known about him sooner?”

Chiron didn’t answer, but I got the feeling he knew. And the truth was not good.

“The important thing,” Rachel said, “is that Jason’s here now. He has a quest to fulfill, which means he will need his own prophecy.”

She closed her eyes and swooned. Two campers rushed forward and caught her. A third ran to the side of the amphitheater and grabbed a bronze three-legged stool, like they’d been trained for this duty. They eased Rachel onto the stool in front of the ruined hearth. Without the fire, the night was dark, but green mist started swirling around Rachel’s feet. When she opened her eyes, they were glowing. Emerald smoke issued from her mouth. The voice that came out was raspy and ancient—the sound a snake would make if it could talk:

“ _Child of lightning, beware the earth, The giants’ revenge the seven shall birth, The forge and dove shall break the cage, And death unleash through Hera’s rage_.”

On the last word, Rachel collapsed, but her helpers were waiting to catch her. They carried her away from the hearth and laid her in the corner to rest.

“Is that normal?” Piper asked to the silence. Everyone turned to look at her. “I mean… does she spew green smoke a lot?”

“Gods, you’re dense!” Drew sneered. “She just issued a prophecy—Jason’s prophecy to save Hera! Why don’t you just—”

“Drew,” Annabeth snapped. “Piper asked a fair question. Something about that prophecy definitely isn’t normal. If breaking Hera’s cage unleashes her rage and causes a bunch of death … why would we free her? It might be a trap, or—or maybe Hera will turn on her rescuers. She’s never been kind to heroes.”

I rose again. “I don’t have much choice. Hera took my memory. I need it back. Besides, we can’t just not help the queen of the heavens if she’s in trouble.”

A girl from Hephaestus cabin stood up—Nyssa, the one with the red bandanna.

“Maybe. But you should listen to Annabeth. Hera can be vengeful. She threw her own son—our dad—down a mountain just because he was ugly.”

“Real ugly,” snickered someone from Aphrodite.

“Shut up!” Nyssa growled. “Anyway, we’ve also got to think —why beware the earth? And what’s the giants’ revenge? What are we dealing with here that’s powerful enough to kidnap the queen of the heavens?”

No one answered, but I noticed Annabeth and Chiron having a silent exchange. It went something like this:

Annabeth: The giants’ revenge … no, it can’t be.

Chiron: Don’t speak of it here. Don’t scare them.

Annabeth: You’re kidding me! We can’t be that unlucky.

Chiron: Later, child. If you told them everything, they would be too terrified to proceed.

Annabeth took a deep breath. “It’s Jason’s quest,” she announced, “so it’s Jason’s choice. Obviously, he’s the child of lightning. According to tradition, he may choose any two companions.”

One of the Stolls yelled, “Well, you, obviously, Annabeth. You’ve got the most experience.”

“No, Travis,” Annabeth said. “First off, I’m not helping Hera. Every time I’ve tried, she’s deceived me, or it’s come back to bite me later. Forget it. No way. Secondly, I’m leaving first thing in the morning to find Percy.”

“It’s connected,” Piper blurted out. “You know that’s true, don’t you? This whole business, your boyfriend’s disappearance—it’s all connected.”

“How?” demanded Drew. “If you’re so smart, how?”

She was definitely getting on my nerves. I wished she could be sitting closer to me, just so I could tell her to shut up.

Piper tried to form an answer, but she couldn’t. Annabeth saved her.

“You may be right, Piper. If this is connected, I’ll find out from the other end—by searching for Percy. As I said, I’m not about to rush off to rescue Hera, even if her disappearance sets the rest of the Olympians fighting again. But there’s another reason I can’t go. The prophecy says otherwise.”

She was right. “It says who I pick,” I said. “The forge and dove shall break the cage. The forge is the symbol of Vul—Hephaestus.”

Under the Cabin Nine banner, Nyssa’s shoulders slumped, like she’d just been given a heavy anvil to carry.

“If you have to beware the earth,” she said, “you should avoid traveling overland. You’ll need air transport.”

Well, I could fly, but I stayed silent. I’d already freaked them out twice, three times if I counted Rachel’s weird prophecy. Besides, travelling all over the country seemed a little too much. I didn’t know how long I could keep that.

“The flying chariot’s broken,” Nyssa continued, “and the pegasi, we’re using them to search for Percy. But maybe Hephaestus cabin can help figure out something else to help. With Jake incapacitated, I’m senior camper. I can volunteer for the quest.”

She didn’t sound enthusiastic.

Then Leo stood up. He’d been so quiet, I had almost forgotten he was there, which didn’t seem like him at all.

“It’s me,” he said. His cabinmates stirred. Several tried to pull him back to his seat, but Leo resisted. “No, it’s me. I know it is. I’ve got an idea for the transportation problem. Let me try. I can fix this!”

I studied him for a moment. I knew I had been on missions before, or at least something similar. Leo was completely new at this. He’d almost died twice this morning. Any strategist would tell him no, but I decided to trust my gut.

I smiled. “We started this together, Leo. Seems only right you come along. You find us a ride, you’re in.”

“Yes!” Leo pumped his fist.

“It’ll be dangerous,” Nyssa warned him. “Hardship, monsters, terrible suffering. Possibly none of you will come back alive.”

“Oh.” Suddenly Leo didn’t look so excited. Then he remembered everyone was watching. “I mean … Oh, cool! Suffering? I love suffering! Let’s do this.”

Annabeth nodded. “Then, Jason, you only need to choose the third quest member. The dove—”

“Oh, absolutely!” Drew was on her feet and flashing a smile. “The dove is Aphrodite. Everybody knows that. I am totally yours.”

Nope, I thought. You are so not coming with me. I was thinking of a nice way to reject her when Piper stepped forward.

“No.”

Drew rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Dumpster girl. Back off.”

“I had the vision of Hera; not you. I have to do this.”

“Anyone can have a vision,” Drew said. “You were just at the right place at the right time.” She turned to me again. “Look, fighting is all fine, I suppose. And people who build things …” She looked at Leo in disdain. “Well, I suppose someone has to get their hands dirty. But you need charm on your side. I can be very persuasive. I could help a lot.”

Well, she was right. She could be pretty persuasive. Wait. How was I so sure about that? But everyone seemed to agree with her. Even Chiron was scratching his beard, like Drew’s participation suddenly made sense to him.

“Well …” Annabeth said. “Given the wording of the prophecy—”

“No!” Piper’s voice sounded slightly different, but I couldn’t pinpoint how—more insistent, richer in tone. “I’m supposed to go.”

I jumped on that idea. Piper coming on the quest sounded far better than Drew’s persuasion skills. And she had been the one to have the vision.

Drew looked around, incredulous. Even some of her own campers were nodding.

“Get over it!” Drew snapped at the crowd. “What can Piper do?”

Piper opened her mouth to answer, but she faltered. I frowned. What was wrong?

“Well,” Drew said smugly, “I guess that settles it.”

Suddenly, a reddish glow surrounded Piper. There was collective gasp.

Her appearance had changed. Not all that much, mind you, but enough for it to make a difference. Her battered jeans changed for green pants. Her sneakers, for black combat boots that added at least an inch to her height. She wore a t-shirt with a geometric pattern, and a black leather jacket. Her hair was cut evenly, and the small braid she’d worn on a side had been remade, with wooden beads at the bottom. She looked beautiful.

“What?” she demanded.

She looked above her, but there was no burning symbol like the one that appeared over Leo. Then she looked down and yelped.

“Oh, god,” she said. “What’s happened?”

A stunned Annabeth pointed at Piper’s hip. I noticed that she carried a dagger, oiled and gleaming, hanging from her belt. Piper unsheathed it and stared at her reflection in the polished metal blade.

“ _Katoptris_ ,” Annabeth murmured. “It’s ironic.”

“What’s ironic?” I asked.

“That’s the name of her dagger. It means mirror.”

Piper’s face looked like she was going to pass out from the shock.

Drew’s face was full of horror and revulsion. “No!” she cried. “Not possible!”

“I don’t understand.” Piper protested. “What just happened?”

Chiron the centaur folded his front legs and bowed to her. We all followed his example.

“Hail, Piper McLean,” Chiron announced gravely, as if he were speaking at her funeral. “Daughter of Aphrodite, lady of the doves, goddess of love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Piper's claiming always made me really uncomfortable (it's supposed to be about her feeling beautiful, not weirded out) so I changed it up. She can very well look beautiful in combat boots and a comfortable outfit, right? I guess she is wearing makeup, but I don't feel like Jason would pay much attention to that. He just knows that she looks beautiful :)  
> Thanks so much for reading this far!


	5. Of memories and dreams

I thought that sleeping would help ease my headache.

I was wrong.

In my dream, Leo ran through the woods. I had seen them before, on the tour with Annabeth, but I don’t think Leo had. He stumbled past the trees, tripping over their gnarled roots and falling into streams. The branches cast creepy shadows on him, and the night birds (owls? It was too dark to tell) looked down at him, their eyes reflecting the moonlight.

Leo ran until I was completely sure that no one would be able to see him from camp. He stopped, panting, and leaned on a tree. He took a deep breath.

Leo opened his hand, and a new light illuminated the forest. I almost woke up.

Leo had summoned fire. Flames danced along his fingertips, casting enough light to see. He kept his eyes on them for a while, and I saw that his expression had turned into a grimace. There was a shadow behind his eyes, despite the light, some sadness that he wasn’t trying to hide anymore.

I tried to go somewhere else. This wasn’t something I was supposed to be seeing. But my feet wouldn’t move, and my eyes wouldn’t close.

Leo kept walking, looking around, as if he was searching for something. I remembered Lupe’s story about the dragon, and suddenly Leo’s plan to get us transportation became very clear. I wanted to scream at him. He couldn’t face a metal dragon all on his own.

There was nothing around him, only trees. Leo didn’t stop. The owls followed him with their eyes, and a few rodents squeaked at the fire. I glimpsed a large, furry shape like a wolf or a bear, but it stayed away from the fire.

He got to the bottom of a clearing, and I saw the first trap —a hundred-foot-wide crater ringed with boulders.

I don’t know much about mechanics, but Leo whistled in appreciation, so it must have been pretty ingenious. In the center of the depression, a metal vat the size of a hot tub had been filled with bubbly dark liquid —Tabasco sauce and motor oil. On a pedestal suspended over the vat, an electric fan rotated in a circle, spreading the fumes across the forest. Could metal dragons smell?

The vat seemed to be unguarded. But Leo looked closely, as if he could see something in the dim light of the stars and his handheld fire. He nodded thoughtfully. I guess he had found some sort of metallic net; something that would trap the dragon. I have to say, it was very well hidden: I was as close as Leo was, and I couldn’t see a thing. It was like he sensed it.

Leo took a step back. The net must be pretty sensitive, I thought. As soon as the dragon stepped on one, it would spring closed, and voilà—one gift-wrapped monster.

Leo thought about it for a second, and then edged closer. He put his foot on the nearest trigger strip, and I wanted to hit him on the head.

Nothing happened. Leo smiled, as if he had expected it. They had to have set the net for something really heavy. Otherwise they could catch an animal, human, smaller monster, whatever. Right. I doubted there was anything else as heavy as a metal dragon in these woods. At least, I hoped there wasn’t. I may have just met Leo, but I didn’t want to see him eaten by a monster.

Leo picked his way down the crater and approached the vat. The fumes were so strong, I could smell them. I had no idea how Leo wasn’t at least crying a bit.

Leo kept looking around the trap. I thought, if he wanted to find the dragon, he probably wouldn’t want it falling into a trap. He must be trying to find the trigger – something that would disable the net.

Still, I was worried. This couldn’t be the only trap the Hephaestus cabin had set up in the forest. What if the dragon had already stepped into another one? How could Leo possibly find them all? And what if there was no release mechanism?

Leo cursed in Spanish. “Mierda, you guys. That’s some bad planning.”

That’s when I noticed the sound. It was more of a tremor—the deep sort of rumbling you hear in your gut rather than your ears. Leo shivered, but he didn’t look around for the source. He just kept examining the trap, thinking.

I did look around. It wasn’t very hard to find. The rumbling kept approaching Leo, louder and louder, until the creature came out of the woods and stopped at the edge of the pit, staring right at Leo, who had his back to it, just fifty feet away.

“Dude, turn around!” I yelled.

I’m not sure if he heard me or the dragon, but he turned slowly. His eyes widened, like he couldn’t believe the dragon had sneaked up on him so fast. It gleamed in the moonlight, it’s eyes glowing red, fixed on the fire.

Leo extinguished the flames, but I could still see the dragon just fine. It was about sixty feet long, snout to tail, its body made of interlocking bronze plates. Its claws were the size of butcher knives, and its mouth was lined with hundreds of dagger-sharp metal teeth. Steam came out of its nostrils. It snarled like a chain saw cutting through a tree. It could’ve bitten Leo in half, easy, or stomped him flat.

Leo was amazed for a second, and then his face fell.

“You don’t have wings,” he said.

The dragon’s snarl died. It tilted its head as if to say, _Why aren’t you running away in terror?_

“Hey, no offense,” Leo said. “You’re amazing! Good god, who made you? Are you hydraulic or nuclear-powered or what? But if it was me, I would’ve put wings on you. What kind of dragon doesn’t have wings? I guess maybe you’re too heavy to fly? I should’ve thought of that.”

The dragon snorted, more confused now. It was supposed to trample Leo. This conversation thing wasn’t part of the plan.

It took a step forward, and Leo shouted, “No!”

The dragon snarled again.

“It’s a trap, bronze brain,” Leo said. “They’re trying to catch you.”

The dragon opened its mouth and blew fire. A column of white-hot flames billowed over Leo, enveloping him and hiding him from view. I found myself praying that he was fire resistant, too.

The flames died, and Leo was still in the same place. He didn’t have the slightest touch of soot on him. I breathed in relief. Even his clothes were okay, which I didn’t understand, but for which I was glad.

The dragon stared at Leo. Its face didn’t actually change, being made of metal and all, but I thought I could read its expression: Why no crispy critter? A spark flew out of its neck like it was about to short-circuit.

“You can’t burn me,” Leo said, trying to sound stern and calm. He talked to the dragon the way you’d talk to a dog. “Stay, boy. Don’t come any closer. I don’t want you to get caught. See, they think you’re broken and have to be scrapped. But I don’t believe that. I can fix you if you’ll let me—”

The dragon creaked, roared, and charged.

The trap sprang. The floor of the crater erupted with a sound like a thousand trash can lids banging together. Dirt and leaves flew, metal net flashing. Leo was knocked off his feet, turned upside down, and doused in Tabasco sauce and oil. He got sandwiched between the vat and the dragon as it thrashed, trying to free itself from the net that had wrapped around them both.

The dragon blew flames in every direction, lighting up the sky and setting trees on fire. Oil and sauce burned all over them. It didn’t hurt Leo, but he grimaced. It probably didn’t taste very well.

“Will you stop that!” he yelled.

The dragon kept squirming. If Leo didn’t move, he was going to get crushed. It took him a while, but he managed to wriggle out from between the dragon and the vat. He squirmed his way through the net. Fortunately, the holes were plenty big enough for a skinny kid.

Leo ran to the dragon’s head. It tried to snap at him, but its teeth were tangled in the mesh. It blew fire again, but seemed to be running out of energy. This time the flames were only orange. They sputtered before they even reached Leo’s face.

“Listen, man,” Leo said, “you’re just going to show them where you are. Then they’ll come and break out the acid and the metal cutters. Is that what you want?”

The dragon’s jaw made a creaking sound, like it was trying to talk. “

Okay, then,” Leo said. “You’ll have to trust me.”

Leo set to work, and the dream changed.

I was on the beach.

It was a beautiful day, sun shining and not a cloud in sight. The waves crashed on the shore, and some thirty feet away from me, there were two people, taking a break from surfing. I got closer to them, and realized with a startle that one of them was Piper.

She didn’t look very different than usual, so I guessed this must be a recent memory. She sat on the sand, droplets on her hair. She was smiling at the man, who couldn’t be anyone but her dad.

“Nice job out there, Pipes.” He gave a smile that should have been in ads and magazine: perfect teeth, dimpled chin, a twinkle in his dark eyes. His close-cropped black hair gleamed with salt water. “You’re getting better at hanging ten.”

Piper flushed with pride, though she looked slightly embarrassed. I wondered if she was any good, and if she liked it. Her dad looked like a natural surfer, like he’d be amazing on the curls. His grin made it look like he was having the best day of his life.

“Sandwich?” Piper's dad dug into a picnic basket. “Let’s see: turkey pesto, crab cake wasabi—ah, a Piper special. Peanut butter and jelly.”

Piper took the sandwich. It was wrapped in gold leaf paper, with a light-up sparkler instead of a toothpick. I remembered Leo’s words about Piper’s dad. They probably had a lot of money; I don’t think anybody else wraps their sandwiches like that. It was odd, seeing Piper and thinking of big houses and limos. She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would live like that; not with her beat-up running shoes and jeans, and the uneven hair she sported.

She made a face, as if there was something troubling her.

“What’s wrong?” Her dad passed her a soda.

“Dad, there’s something—”

“Hold on, Pipes. That’s a serious face. Ready for Any Three Questions?”

Piper managed a smile.

“First question,” she said. “Mom.”

Her dad shrugged with resignation. “What do you want to know, Piper? I’ve already told you—she disappeared. I don’t know why, or where she went. After you were born, she simply left. I never heard from her again.”

“Do you think she’s still alive?”

He stared at the waves. “Your Grandpa Tom,” he said at last, “he used to tell me that if you walked far enough toward the sunset, you’d come to Ghost Country, where you could talk to the dead. He said a long time ago, you could bring the dead back; but then mankind messed up. Well, it’s a long story.”

“Like the Land of the Dead for the Greeks,” Piper said. “It was in the west, too. And Orpheus—he tried to bring his wife back.” Her dad nodded.

“Lot of similarities between Greek and Cherokee,” he agreed. “Wonder what your grandpa would think if he saw us now, sitting at the end of the western land. He’d probably think we’re ghosts.”

“So you’re saying you believe those stories? You think Mom is dead?”

His eyes watered, and I saw the sadness behind them. I didn’t think it was just because of Venus leaving him, though. There was something else, like the shadow I’d seen in Leo’s eyes in the forest.

“I don’t believe the stories,” he said. “They’re fun to tell, but if I really believed in Ghost Country, or animal spirits, or Greek gods … I don’t think I could sleep at night. I’d always be looking for somebody to blame.”

Somebody to blame for what? For Venus abandoning him without even a good-bye note, leaving him with a newborn girl he wasn’t ready to care for? For Piper’s grandfather? His voiced had sounded too melancholic on his name. Piper’s dad was successful, but he wasn’t happy.

“I don’t know if she’s alive,” he said. “But I do think she might as well be in Ghost Country, Piper. There’s no getting her back. If I believed otherwise … I don’t think I could stand that, either.”

Behind them, a car door opened. Piper turned, and her face fell.

A black woman was marching toward them in her business suit, wobbling over the sand in her high heels, her PDA in hand. The look on her face was partly annoyed, partly triumphant, and I could tell that Piper wished with all her might that she wouldn’t reach them. Please fall down, her face said. If there’s any animal spirit or Greek god that can help, make her take a header. I’m not asking for permanent damage, just knock her out for the rest of the day, please?

But the woman kept advancing.

“Dad,” Piper said quickly. “Something happened yesterday…”

But he’d seen the woman, too. He was constructing a business face. I guessed the woman wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t serious. Something about his work, or probably related to whatever Piper wanted to tell him.

“We’ll get back to that, Pipes,” he promised. “I’d better see what Jane wants. You know how she is.”

Piper let him go. She looked miserable.

Her dad trudged across the sand to meet Jane. I could barely hear them talking. Jane told Mr. Mclean something about a stolen car, and I remembered Leo’s comment on the bus. Piper had stolen a BMW. Jane would occasionally point at Piper like she was a disgusting pet that had whizzed on the carpet.

Her dad’s energy and enthusiasm drained away. He gestured for Jane to wait. Then he walked back to Piper. He wore a different look in his eyes —like she’d betrayed his trust.

“You told me you would try, Piper,” he said.

“Dad, I hate that school. I can’t do it. I wanted to tell you about the BMW, but—”

“They’ve expelled you,” he said. “A car, Piper? You’re sixteen next year. I would buy you any car you want. How could you—”

“You mean Jane would buy me a car?” Piper demanded. She looked like she was about to cry, in anger and pain. “Dad, just listen for once. Don’t make me wait for you to ask your stupid three questions. I want to go to regular school. I want you to take me to parents’ night, not Jane. Or homeschool me! I learned so much when we read about Greece together. We could do that all the time! We could—”

“Don’t make this about me,” her dad said. “I do the best I can, Piper. We’ve had this conversation.”

No, Piper’s face said. You’ve cut off this conversation. For years.

Her dad sighed. “Jane’s talked to the police, brokered a deal. The dealership won’t press charges, but you have to agree to go to a boarding school in Nevada. They specialize in problems … in kids with tough issues.”

“That’s what I am.” Her voice trembled. “A problem.”

“Piper … you said you’d try. You let me down. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Do anything,” she said. “But do it yourself! Don’t let Jane handle it for you. You can’t just send me away.”

Her dad looked down at the picnic basket. His sandwich sat uneaten on a piece of gold leaf paper. It looked like they’d planned for a whole afternoon in the surf. Now that was ruined.

“Go see her,” her dad said. “She’s got the details.”

“Dad …” He looked away, gazing at the ocean like he could see all the way to Ghost Country. Piper grit her teeth, as if pushing back tears.

She headed up the beach toward Jane, who smiled coldly and held up a plane ticket. She’d already arranged everything. Piper was just another problem of the day that Jane could now check off her list.

The dream changed again.

I stood in a clearing in the middle of a redwood forest. In front of me rose the ruins of a stone mansion. Low gray clouds blended with the ground fog, and cold rain hung in the air. A pack of large gray wolves milled around me, brushing against my legs, snarling and baring their teeth. They gently nudged me toward the ruins.

I looked at my hands. This wasn’t a memory; this was happening right now.

I had no desire to become the world’s largest dog biscuit, so I decided to do what they wanted.

The ground squelched under my boots as I walked. Stone spires of chimneys, no longer attached to anything, rose up like totem poles. The house must’ve been enormous once, multi-storied with massive log walls and a soaring gabled roof, but now nothing remained but its stone skeleton.

My mind was going crazy with recognition. Each step I took, another wave of no memories that should have been there.

I passed under a crumbling doorway and found myself in a kind of courtyard. Before me was a drained reflecting pool, long and rectangular. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, because the bottom was filled with mist. A dirt path led all the way around, and the house’s uneven walls rose on either side. Wolves paced under the archways of rough red volcanic stone.

At the far end of the pool sat a giant she-wolf, several feet taller than I was. Her eyes glowed silver in the fog, and her coat was the same color as the rocks—warm chocolaty red. I had seen her before. I had _been_ here before. Her name rested at the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t reach it.

“I know this place,” I said.

The wolf regarded me. She didn’t exactly speak, but I could understand her. The movements of her ears and whiskers, the flash of her eyes, the way she curled her lips—all of these were part of her language.

_Of course_ , the she-wolf said. _You began your journey here as a pup. Now you must find your way back. A new quest, a new start_.

“That isn’t fair,” I said. But as soon as I spoke, I knew there was no point complaining to the she-wolf. Wolves didn’t feel sympathy. They never expected fairness.

The wolf said: _Conquer or die. This is always our way_.

I wanted to protest that I couldn’t conquer if I didn’t know who I was, or where I was supposed to go. A jolt of electricity coursed through my spine. I knew this wolf. Her name rolled off my tongue as easy as a breath, and a rush of memories piled behind it.

She was simply Lupa, the Mother Wolf, the greatest of her kind. Long ago she’d found me in this place, protected me, nurtured me, chosen me, but if I showed weakness, she would tear me to shreds. Rather than being her pup, I would become her dinner.

In the wolf pack, weakness was not an option.

“Can you guide me?” I asked.

Lupa made a rumbling noise deep in her throat, and the mist in the pool dissolved.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. At opposite ends of the pool, two dark spires had erupted from the cement floor like the drill bits of some massive tunneling machines boring through the surface. I couldn’t tell if the spires were made of rock or petrified vines, but they were formed of thick tendrils that came together in a point at the top. Each spire was about five feet tall, but they weren’t identical. The one closest to me was darker and seemed like a solid mass, its tendrils fused together. As I watched, it pushed a little farther out of the earth and expanded a little wider.

On Lupa’s end of the pool, the second spire’s tendrils were more open, like the bars of a cage. Inside, I could vaguely see a misty figure struggling, shifting within its confines.

“Hera,” I said.

The she-wolf growled in agreement. The other wolves circled the pool, their fur standing up on their backs as they snarled at the spires.

_The enemy has chosen this place to awaken her most powerful son, the giant king_ , Lupa said. _Our sacred place, where demigods are claimed —the place of death or life. The burned house. The house of the wolf. It is an abomination. You must stop her._

“Her?” I was confused. “You mean, Hera?” That didn’t seem right.

The she-wolf gnashed her teeth impatiently. _Use your senses, pup. I care nothing for Juno, but if she falls, our enemy wakes. And that will be the end for all of us. You know this place. You can find it again. Cleanse our house. Stop this before it is too late._

The dark spire grew slowly larger, like the bulb of some horrible flower. I sensed that if it ever opened, it would release something I did not want to meet. But I was so lost, and even with this clue, I could barely think.

“Who am I?” I asked Lupa. “At least tell me that.”

Wolves don’t have much of a sense of humor, but I could tell the question amused Lupa, as if I were a cub just trying out his claws, practicing to be the alpha male. I found the feeling familiar.

_You are our saving grace, as always_. The she-wolf curled her lip, as if she had just made a clever joke. _Do not fail, son of Jupiter_.

She disappeared in the mist, and I woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a bit of backstory for Leo and Piper! It's a bit hard to include it in a story in first person, but I love the scene of Leo finding Festus too much not to include it. I'll try to update again tomorrow!


	6. Fact

I woke to the sound of thunder.

Then I remembered where I was. It was always thundering in Cabin One. Let me tell you, that did not help with my headache. At all.

Above my cot, the domed ceiling was decorated with a blue-and-white mosaic like a cloudy sky. The cloud tiles shifted across the ceiling, changing from white to black. Thunder rumbled through the room, and gold tiles flashed like veins of lightning.

Except for the cot that the other campers had brought me, the cabin had no regular furniture—no chairs, tables, or dressers. As far as I could tell, it didn’t even have a bathroom. The walls were carved with alcoves, each holding a bronze brazier or a golden eagle statue on a marble pedestal. In the center of the room, a twenty-foot-tall, full-color statue of Zeus in classic Greek robes stood with a shield at his side and a lightning bolt raised, ready to smite somebody.

Sure, I knew that he was my father, but that didn’t make the statue look any less cold. The whole cabin felt like freezing.

I studied the statue, looking for anything I had in common with the Lord of the Sky. Black hair? Nope. I’d looked at myself in a mirror (yes, I had forgotten how I looked like. Blame Juno.) and I was blond. Grumbly expression? Well, maybe. Beard? No thanks. In his robes and sandals, Zeus looked like a really buff, really angry hippie.

Yeah, Cabin One. A big honor, the other campers had said. Sure, if you liked sleeping in a cold temple by yourself with Hippie Zeus frowning down at you all night.

I got up and rubbed my neck. My whole body was stiff from bad sleep and last night’s campfire show. Summoning lighting had felt completely natural, but it had been exhausting. And if I counted the headache that kept rumbling behind my eyelids, I wasn’t exactly in my best shape.

Next to the cot, new clothes were laid out for me: jeans, sneakers, and an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt. I definitely needed a change of clothes, but looking down at my tattered purple shirt, I didn’t want to. It felt wrong somehow, putting on the camp shirt. I still couldn’t believe I belonged here, despite everything they’d told me.

My brain racked again, encompassed with the thunder. But there were no more memories that I could reach. Wearing the camp t-shirt felt like a betrayal, but who was I betraying? And more important than that: if whoever I was stood against Camp Half-Blood, then who the hell was I?

I thought about my dreams. Leo making fire. Piper’s dad sending her off to school. The wolf house.

No more memories came back. I knew I’d been in the house in the redwoods before. Lupa was real. My head stung, and I sighed helplessly. The marks on my arm burned.

Annabeth had said that they looked burned on my skin. If I thought hard enough, I could almost smell it, but it was impossible to tell if it was a memory, or just my imagination and the braziers.

If I could find those ruins, I could find my past. I could find who I was, and who was looking for me. Who had been worried about me, just like all of Camp Half-Blood was worried about Percy Jackson. Had I had friends? Family? Was there anyone who missed me?

It felt selfish, but I wished that there was.

I thought back to the Wolf house. Whatever was growing inside that rock spire, I had to stop it. I looked at Hippie Zeus.

“You’re welcome to help.”

The statue said nothing.

“Thanks, Pops,” I muttered. That feeling of loneliness was familiar, too.

Please, let there be someone who misses me.

It didn’t feel any better, but I changed clothes. I checked my reflection in Zeus’s shield. My face looked watery and strange in the metal, like I was dissolving in a pool of gold. Definitely, I didn’t look as good as Piper had last night after she’d suddenly been transformed.

I still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. At the moment, I had felt bad for her. Maybe that was crazy, considering she’d just been claimed by a goddess and got a cool makeover. Everybody had started fawning over her, telling her how amazing she was and how obviously she should be the one who went on the quest—but she had seemed confused, and baffled by it. Cool clothes, glowing pink aura, and boom: suddenly people liked her.

I felt like I understood that. Last night, when I’d called down lightning, the other campers’ reactions had seemed very familiar. Everything about the situation had. By now, I was pretty sure I’d been dealing with that for a long time—people looking at me in awe just because I was the son of Jupiter, treating me special, but it didn’t have anything to do with me. Nobody cared about me, just my big scary daddy standing behind me with the doomsday bolt, as if to say, _Respect this kid or eat voltage!_

My mind hesitated, as if looking for something. An exception to the rule. I could feel how close I was to the answer, but there was an abyss stretching down in front of me, and I couldn’t cross it to get to remember.

Was there really an exception to that? I hoped the answer was yes.

After the campfire, when people started heading back to their cabins, I had gone up to Piper and formally asked her to come with me on the quest. She’d still been in a state of shock, but she’d nodded, managing a smile. She looked somewhat happy, and I was glad that the claiming hadn’t scared her. Venus – no, Aphrodite – had really found her clothes that she was comfortable in.

I was really happy Piper was going with Leo and me on the quest. I had tried to act brave at the campfire, but it was just that—an act. The idea of going up against an evil force powerful enough to kidnap Hera scared me witless, especially since I didn’t even know my own past. I mean, how was I supposed to help if I didn’t know what I could do, or what friends I had?

I’d need help, and it felt right: Piper should be with me. Just like with Leo, I was trusting my gut. I felt, no, I knew, that it was a strategy that had helped me before.

I slipped on my new shoes, ready to get out of that cold, empty cabin.

Then I spotted something I hadn’t noticed the night before. A brazier had been moved out of one of the alcoves to create a sleeping niche, with a bedroll, a backpack, even some pictures taped to the wall.

I walked over. Whoever had slept there, it had been a long time ago. The bedroll smelled musty. The backpack was covered with a thin film of dust. Some of the photos once taped to the wall had lost their stickiness and fallen to the floor.

One picture showed Annabeth—much younger, maybe eight, but I could tell it was her: same blond hair and gray eyes, same distracted look, like she was thinking a million things at once. She stood next to a sandy-haired guy about fourteen or fifteen, with a mischievous smile and ragged leather armor over a T-shirt. He was pointing to an alley behind them, like he was telling the photographer, _Let’s go meet things in a dark alley and kill them!_

A second photo showed Annabeth and the same guy sitting at a campfire, laughing hysterically. Finally, I picked up one of the photos that had fallen. It was a strip of pictures like you’d take in a do-it-yourself photo booth: Annabeth and the sandy-haired guy, but with another girl between them. She was maybe fifteen, with black hair—choppy like Piper’s had been yesterday—a black leather jacket, and silver jewelry, so she looked kind of goth; but she was caught mid-laugh, and it was clear she was with her two best friends.

“That’s Thalia,” someone said.

I turned. Annabeth was peering over his shoulder. Her expression was sad, like the picture brought back hard memories. “She’s the other child of Zeus who lived here—but not for long. Sorry, I should’ve knocked.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Not like I think of this place as home.”

I bit my tongue. It was the truth, but it still felt harsh to say.

Annabeth was dressed for travel, with a winter coat over her camp clothes, her knife at her belt, and a backpack across her shoulder.

I said, “Don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind about coming with us?”

She shook her head. “You got a good team already. I’m off to look for Percy.”

I was a little disappointed. I liked Annabeth, and I would’ve appreciated having somebody on the trip who knew what we were doing, so I wouldn’t feel like I was leading Piper and Leo off a cliff.

“Hey, you’ll do fine,” Annabeth promised. “Something tells me this isn’t your first quest.”

I had a vague suspicion she was right, but that didn’t make me feel any better. If only I had more answers. Just the security of knowing that I had already done this would help immensely. I couldn’t plunge into a fight relying only on my gut, no matter how good it was.

I looked at the pictures of Annabeth smiling. How long had it been since she’d smiled? She must really like this Percy guy to search for him so hard, and the thought made my brain start a racket again. There was a word I was looking for, and I couldn’t find it. Was it a name, or just an empty space? Was there someone looking for me? Who had I forgotten?

“You know who I am,” I said. Again, just instincts. “Don’t you?”

Annabeth gripped the hilt of her dagger. She looked for a chair to sit on, but of course there weren’t any.

“Honestly, Jason … I’m not sure. My best guess, you’re a loner. It happens sometimes. For one reason or another, the camp never found you, but you survived anyway by constantly moving around. Trained yourself to fight. Handled the monsters on your own. You beat the odds.”

My brain didn’t agree with Annabeth, but what she said did make sense.

“The first thing Chiron said to me,” I remembered, “was _you should be dead_.”

“That could be why,” Annabeth said. “Most demigods would never make it on their own. And a child of Zeus—I mean, it doesn’t get any more dangerous than that. The chances of your reaching age fifteen without finding Camp Half-Blood or dying—microscopic. But like I said, it does happen. Thalia ran away when she was young. She survived on her own for years. Even took care of me for a while. So maybe you were a loner too.”

I held out my arm. “And these marks?”

Annabeth glanced at the tattoos. Clearly, they bothered her. I tried not to let that annoy me and failed.

“Well, the eagle is the symbol of Zeus, so that makes sense. The twelve lines—maybe they stand for years, if you’d been making them since you were three years old. SPQR—that’s the motto of the old Roman Empire: Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and the People of Rome. Though why you would burn that on your own arm, I don’t know. Unless you had a really harsh Latin teacher …”

Yup, that was definitely not it. But Annabeth’s words had struck something. I tripped at the edge of the abyss, but I couldn’t fall through it. It was just there, separating me from my life, and I couldn’t fly over it.

I hadn’t been alone. I had known people. It didn’t make sense, but I knew I was right. If I didn’t have facts, I could only trust my instincts. And right now, they screamed that Annabeth was missing something.

Lupa. Maybe Annabeth didn’t know about the Wolf house.

“I, um … had a weird dream last night,” I started. It seemed like a stupid thing to confide, but Annabeth didn’t look surprised.

“Happens all the time to demigods,” she said. “What did you see?”

I told her about the wolves and the ruined house and the two rock spires. As I talked, Annabeth started pacing, looking more and more agitated.

“You don’t remember where this house is?” she asked.

I shook my head. “But I’m sure I’ve been there before.”

“Redwoods,” she mused. “Could be northern California. And the she-wolf … I’ve studied goddesses, spirits, and monsters my whole life. I’ve never heard of Lupa.”

Bingo. So what were we missing, then?

“She said the enemy was a ‘her.’ I thought maybe it was Hera, but—”

“I wouldn’t trust Hera, but I don’t think she’s the enemy. And that thing rising out of the earth—” Annabeth’s expression darkened. “You’ve got to stop it.”

“You know what it is, don’t you?” I asked. “Or at least, you’ve got a guess. I saw your face last night at the campfire. You looked at Chiron like it was suddenly dawning on you, but you didn’t want to scare us.”

Annabeth hesitated. “Jason, the thing about prophecies …the more you know, the more you try to change them, and that can be disastrous. Chiron believes it’s better that you find your own path, find out things in your own time. If he’d told me everything he knew before my first quest with Percy… I’ve got to admit, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to go through with it. For your quest, it’s even more important.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Not if you succeed. At least … I hope not.”

“But I don’t even know where to start. Where am I supposed to go?” My voice cracked a bit, but I didn’t mind. Annabeth was a leader; she understood what it was like to act confident while scared out of your mind.

“Follow the monsters,” she suggested.

I thought about that. The ventus who’d attacked us at the Grand Canyon had said he was being recalled to his boss. If we could track the storm spirits, we might be able to find the person controlling them. And maybe that would lead us to Hera’s prison.

“Okay,” I said. “How do I find storm winds?”

“Personally, I’d ask a wind god,” Annabeth said. “Aeolus is the master of all the winds, but he’s a little … unpredictable. No one finds him unless he wants to be found. I’d try one of the four seasonal wind gods that work for Aeolus. The nearest one, the one who has the most dealings with heroes, is Boreas, the North Wind.”

“So if I looked him up on Google maps—”

“Oh, he’s not hard to find,” Annabeth promised. “He settled in North America like all the other gods. So of course he picked the oldest northern settlement, about as far north as you can go.”

“Maine?” I guessed.

“Farther.”

I tried to envision a map. What was farther north than Maine? The oldest northern settlement … “Canada,” I decided. “Quebec.”

Annabeth smiled. “I hope you speak French.”

I actually felt a spark of excitement. Quebec—at least now I had a goal. Find the North Wind, track down the storm spirits, find out who they worked for and where that ruined house was. Free Hera. All in four days. Cake.

“Thanks, Annabeth.” I looked at the photo booth pictures still in my hand. I still had tons of questions, but there was one that bothered me too much not to ask it. “So, um … you said it was dangerous being a child of Zeus. What ever happened to Thalia?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” Annabeth said. “She became a Hunter of Artemis—one of the handmaidens of the goddess. They roam around the country killing monsters. We don’t see them at camp very often.”

I glanced over at the huge statue of Zeus. I understood why Thalia had slept in this alcove. It was the only place in the cabin not in Hippie Zeus’s line of sight. And even that hadn’t been enough. She’d chosen to follow Artemis and be part of a group rather than stay in this cold drafty temple, alone with her twenty-foot-tall dad—my dad—glowering down at her. _Eat voltage!_ I didn’t have any trouble understanding Thalia’s feelings. I wondered if there was a Hunters group for guys.

“Who’s the other kid in the photo?” I asked. “The sandy-haired guy.”

Annabeth’s expression tightened. Touchy subject.

“That’s Luke,” she said. “He’s dead now.”

I decided it was best not to ask more, but the way Annabeth said Luke’s name, I wondered if maybe Percy Jackson wasn’t the only boy Annabeth had ever liked.

I focused again on Thalia’s face. This photo of her was important. I was missing something. I felt a strange sense of connection to this other child of Zeus—someone who might understand my confusion, maybe even answer some questions. But another voice inside me, an insistent whisper, said: _Dangerous. Stay away_.

“How old is she now?” I asked.

“Hard to say. She was a tree for a while. Now she’s immortal.”

“What?”

My expression must’ve been pretty good, because Annabeth laughed. I liked seeing that. Annabeth striked me as the kind of person that deserved to be smiling more often.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s not something all children of Zeus go through. It’s a long story, but … well, she was out of commission for a long time. If she’d aged regularly, she’d be in her twenties now, but she still looks the same as in that picture, like she’s about … well, about your age. Fifteen, probably. I don’t think you’re sixteen.”

I would have asked why she knew that, but something Lupa had said kept nagging at me. The next question was basically autopilot. No facts; instincts.

“What’s her last name?”

Annabeth looked uneasy. “She didn’t use a last name, really. If she had to, she’d use her mom’s, but they didn’t get along. Thalia ran away when she was pretty young.”

There was a spark of electricity waiting at the base of my spine, and I knew that whether it exploded or faded depended solely on Annabeth’s answer. I waited.

“Grace,” Annabeth said. “Thalia Grace.”

The spark blew up, all the way to my brain. Fact.

I dropped the picture.

“You okay?” Annabeth asked.

It felt like my brain had stopped. I hadn’t crossed the abyss, but I had made contact with the other side. It was just a word, but no other word had ever been this big to me. Maybe Hera had forgotten to steal it. Or maybe she’d left it there on purpose—just enough for me to remember, and know that digging up my past was terribly, terribly dangerous.

_You should be dead_ , Chiron had said. It wasn’t a comment about my beating the odds as a loner. Chiron knew something specific—something about my family. The she-wolf’s words in my dream finally made sense, her clever joke at my expense. I imagined Lupa growling a wolfish laugh.

“What is it?” Annabeth pressed.

I couldn’t keep this to myself. It was too big. The secret would kill me, and I wanted to trust Annabeth. I wanted her to trust me.

“You have to swear not to tell anyone else,” I said. I clenched my hands, trying to get the circulation back. Was I going to get electrocuted every time I remembered something? My tattoo burned.

“Jason—”

“Swear it,” I urged, aware that I sounded a little crazy. “Until I figure out what’s going on, what this all means—” I rubbed the burned tattoos on my forearm. “You have to keep a secret.”

Annabeth hesitated, but her curiosity won out. “All right. Until you tell me it’s okay, I won’t share what you say with anyone else. I swear on the River Styx.”

Thunder rumbled, even louder than usual for the cabin. I breathed in.

_You are our saving Grace_ , the wolf had snarled. I picked up the photo from the floor.

“My last name is Grace,” I said. Not instinct. Fact. “This is my sister.”

Annabeth turned pale. I could see her wrestling with dismay, disbelief, anger. She thought I was lying. My claim was impossible. But I knew, as clear as day, that it was true.

The doors of the cabin burst open. Half a dozen campers spilled in, led by the bald guy from Iris, Butch.

“Hurry!” he said, and I couldn’t tell if his expression was excitement or fear. “The dragon is back.”

From my spot at the door of cabin one, it looked like Leo had been busy.

He sat atop the dragon, grinning like a lunatic. The automaton was even more scary now that I could see it with my own eyes. It was a giant bronze death machine, but Leo had somehow tamed it.

The camp was in full alarm. A conch horn kept blowing. All the satyrs were screaming, “Don’t kill me!” Half the camp had run outside in a mixture of pajamas and armor.

The dragon was settled down right in the middle of the green, where everyone could see it.

“It’s cool!” Leo yelled. “Don’t shoot!”

Hesitantly, the archers lowered their bows. The warriors backed away, keeping their spears and swords ready. They made a loose wide ring around the metal monster. Other demigods hid behind their cabin doors or peeped out the windows. Nobody seemed anxious to get close.

I couldn’t blame them. The dragon was huge. It glistened in the morning sun like a living penny sculpture —different shades of copper and bronze—a sixty-foot-long serpent with steel talons and drill-bit teeth and glowing ruby eyes. It had bat-shaped wings twice its length that unfurled like metallic sails, making a sound like coins cascading out of a slot machine every time they flapped.

“It’s beautiful,” someone muttered. I looked over, and saw that it was Piper. The other demigods stared at her like she was insane.

The dragon reared its head and shot a column of fire into the sky. Campers scrambled away and hefted their weapons, but Leo slid calmly off the dragon’s back. He held up his hands like he was surrendering, except he still had that crazy grin on his face.

“People of Earth, I come in peace!” he shouted. He looked like he’d been rolling around in the campfire. His army coat and his face were smeared with soot. His hands were grease-stained, and he wore a new tool belt around his waist. His eyes were bloodshot. His curly hair was so oily it stuck up in porcupine quills, and he smelled strangely of Tabasco sauce. But he looked absolutely delighted. “Festus is just saying hello!” “

That thing is dangerous!” an Ares girl shouted, brandishing her spear. “Kill it now!”

Nope, we couldn’t have that.

“Stand down!” I yelled. The tone came out naturally, as if I’d done it thousands of times. Annabeth and I pushed through the crowd, followed by Nyssa.

I gazed up at the dragon. It had wings. It hadn’t had wings last night, I was sure of it. I shook my head, amazed.

“Leo, what have you done?”

“Found a ride!” Leo beamed. “You said I could go on the quest if I got you a ride. Well, I got you a class-A metallic flying bad boy! Festus can take us anywhere!”

I couldn’t help a smile. Leo’s excitement was contagious.

“It—has wings,” Nyssa stammered. Her jaw looked like it might drop off her face.

“Yeah!” Leo said. “I found them and reattached them.”

“But it never had wings. Where did you find them?”

Leo hesitated, and I could tell he was hiding something. “In … the woods,” he said. “Repaired his circuits, too, mostly, so no more problems with him going haywire.”

“Mostly?” Nyssa asked. The dragon’s head twitched. It tilted to one side and a stream of black liquid—maybe oil, hopefully just oil—poured out of its ear, all over Leo.

“Just a few kinks to work out,” Leo said.

“But how did you survive …?” Nyssa was still staring at the creature in awe. “I mean, the fire breath …”

“I’m quick,” Leo said. “And lucky. Now, am I on this quest, or what?”

I scratched my head. For one, it wasn’t my business why Leo wanted to keep his fire thing a secret. I was keeping my wind thing a secret, and I didn’t even know why.

“You named him Festus?” I said, having a sudden thought. “You know that in Latin, ‘festus’ means ‘happy’? You want us to ride off to save the world on Happy the Dragon?”

The dragon twitched and shuddered and flapped his wings.

“That’s a yes, bro!” Leo said. “Now, um, I’d really suggest we get going, guys. I already picked up some supplies in the—um, in the woods. And all these people with weapons are making Festus nervous.”

I frowned. I was all for Leo’s idea but…

“But we haven’t planned anything yet. We can’t just—”

“Go,” Annabeth said. She was the only one who didn’t look nervous at all. Her expression was sad and wistful, like this reminded her of better times. “Jason, you’ve only got three days until the solstice now, and you should never keep a nervous dragon waiting. This is certainly a good omen. Go!”

I nodded. I found Piper coming toward us, and smiled at her. “You ready, partner?”

Piper looked at the bronze dragon wings shining against the sky, and those talons that could’ve shredded her to pieces.

“You bet,” she said.

Being basically part of the wind was still on my top spot, but flying on the dragon was amazing. Up high, the air must have been freezing cold for Leo and Piper; but the dragon’s metal hide generated so much heat, it was like we were flying in a protective bubble. I didn’t feel either of them. The wind temperature cooled or rose around me, keeping me comfortable. I was actually glad that there was so much wind, or I would have boiled from the heat.

The grooves in the dragon’s back were designed like high-tech saddles, so they weren’t uncomfortable at all. Leo showed us how to hook our feet in the chinks of the armor, like in stirrups, and use the leather safety harnesses cleverly concealed under the exterior plating. We sat single file: Leo in front, then Piper, then me. I laid my head back to feel the wind, and placed my hands behind me for support. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine I was riding the currents again. It hadn’t been a day since I’d last flown by myself, and I was already aching to do it again.

Leo used the reins to steer the dragon into the sky like he’d been doing it all his life. The metal wings worked perfectly, and soon the coast of Long Island was just a hazy line behind us. We shot over Connecticut and climbed into the gray winter clouds. Leo grinned back at us. “Cool, right?”

“What if we get spotted?” Piper asked.

“The Mist,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I knew its name. “It keeps mortals from seeing magic things. If they spot us, they’ll probably mistake us for a small plane or something.”

Piper glanced at me over her shoulder. “You sure about that?”

“No,” I admitted. But I didn’t really care. I was looking at the picture of Thalia, that I had taken with me. The quest, my memories, myself, everything was instinct, but Thalia was real. I needed something real with me.

Piper gave a look, and I realized she had noticed the photo. I put it in my pocket quickly, blushing. I wasn’t ready to talk about this yet. Annabeth had been one thing, but Piper… I still didn’t know how to act around her.

“We’re making good time.” I said, trying to change the subject. “Probably get there by tonight.”

Piper didn’t ask about Thalia. Her lips twitched, as if she wanted to, but she remained silent, and I relaxed a bit.

“Where are we heading?” she said instead.

“To find the god of the North Wind,” I said. “And chase some storm spirits.”


	7. Trip to the North

We were silent for a good ten minutes, until Leo’s permanent thought stream bothered him. I know that because the first thing he said was “Shut up, me.”

It looked like I wasn’t the only one buzzing with anxiety.

“What?” Piper asked.

“Nothing,” Leo said. “Long night. I think I’m hallucinating. It’s cool.” I arched an eyebrow. Had he slept at all last night?

“Just joking,” said Leo, but it didn’t sound all that true. “So what’s the plan, bro? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something?”

As we flew over New England, and with Leo’s running commentary, I laid out the plan: First, find Boreas and try to get information from him –

“His name is Boreas?” Leo asked. “What is he, the God of Boring?”

He kept tapping a rhythm on Festus’ metal plaques. I may have been nervous, but if we connected Leo to a dynamo, he’d generate electricity. Second, I continued, we had to find the venti that had attacked us at the Grand Canyon—

“Can we just call them storm spirits?” Leo asked. “Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks.”

And third, I finished, we had to find out who the storm spirits worked for, so we could find Hera and free her.

“So you want to look for Dylan, the nasty storm dude, on purpose,” Leo said. “The guy who threw me off the skywalk and sucked Coach Hedge into the clouds.”

“That’s about it,” I said. “Well … there may be a wolf involved, too. But I think she’s friendly. She probably won’t eat us, unless we show weakness.”

I told them about my dream—Lupa and the burned-out house with stone spires growing out of the swimming pool.

“Uh-huh,” Leo said. “But you don’t know where this place is.”

“Nope,” I admitted.

“There’s also giants,” Piper added. “The prophecy said the giants’ revenge.”

“Hold on,” Leo said. “Giants—like more than one? Why can’t it be just one giant who wants revenge?”

“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “I remember in some of the old Greek stories, there was something about an army of giants.”

“Great,” Leo muttered. “Of course, with our luck, it’s an army. So you know anything else about these giants? Didn’t you do a bunch of myth research for that movie with your dad?”

“Your dad’s an actor?” It made sense, with what I’d seen in the dream.

Leo laughed. “I keep forgetting about your amnesia. Heh. Forgetting about amnesia. That’s funny. But yeah, her dad’s Tristan McLean.”

“Uh—Sorry, what was he in?” Nice question, Jason, I thought. You don’t know your own age, you can’t know movies.

“It doesn’t matter,” Piper said quickly. “The giants—well, there were lots of giants in Greek mythology. But if I’m thinking of the right ones, they were bad news. Huge, almost impossible to kill. They could throw mountains and stuff. I think they were related to the Titans. They rose from the earth after Kronos lost the war—I mean the first Titan war, thousands of years ago—and they tried to destroy Olympus. If we’re talking about the same giants—”

“Chiron said it was happening again,” I remembered. Short term memory for the win. “The last chapter. That’s what he meant. No wonder he didn’t want us to know all the details.”

Leo whistled. “So … giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn’t the time to bring up my psycho babysitter.”

“Is that another joke?” Piper asked. Took the words right out of my mouth.

Leo sighed.

“Nope. I called her Tía Callida, but she was really Hera, and she appeared to me at camp yesterday. All creepy, always wearing a black widow’s dress and a shawl. She tried to kill me a couple of times.”

“Hera tried to kill you?” gasped Piper.

Leo shrugged. “Well, yeah. She tried to set me on fire, made me poke a rattlesnake. Things like that. She babysat me a few times before my mom died. Then I moved, and I never saw her again.”

I was going to ask about Hera, but something in Leo’s tone made me stay silent. Whatever he was about to say, it was important.

“I was eight,” said Leo. He kept looking ahead, and there was a shadow to his voice that I recognized from the dream. “We stayed up late at the back of the shop, ‘cause my mom was working on a patent. It was kind of creepy at night, with lots of echoes and shadows. We had to cross the whole shop to get out, and when we got to the door, my mom realized she’d forgotten her keys.”

Before me, Piper’s shoulders had tensed. Leo continued.

“That’s when the doors slammed shut. I called my mom, but she didn’t answer, and a weird woman made of dirt appeared in the shop. She was asleep, and at first I thought it was Hera, but nope. She said she had to kill my mom because I’d fight her kids one day. The shop collapsed, with us still inside. My mom didn’t make it.”

We stayed silent for a long time. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know if there was anything to say. The grief in Leo’s voice seemed familiar somehow, and I knew that I wouldn’t want pity, if I had been in his place. So I was quiet, and let him have some space.

Piper was the first to speak, when Leo relaxed a little.

“That’s … disturbing,” she said.

“’Bout sums it up,” Leo agreed. “Thing is, everybody says don’t trust Hera. She hates demigods. And the prophecy said we’d cause death if we unleash her rage. So I’m wondering … why are we doing this?”

“She chose us,” I said, because it was true, and because I didn’t know what else to say. “All three of us. We’re the first of the seven who have to gather for the Great Prophecy. This quest is the beginning of something much bigger.”

I hadn’t been convinced until I said it, but my instinct told me that it was right. This felt like the start of something huge. I only hoped that, when the huge things came, I’d know a little more about myself. I pushed back the thoughts about Thalia. This wasn’t the moment for that.

“Besides,” I continued, “helping Hera is the only way I can get back my memory. And that dark spire in my dream seemed to be feeding on Hera’s energy. If that thing unleashes a king of the giants by destroying Hera—”

“Not a good trade-off,” Piper agreed. “At least Hera is on our side—mostly. Losing her would throw the gods into chaos. She’s the main one who keeps peace in the family. And a war with the giants could be even more destructive than the Titan War.”

I nodded. “Chiron also talked about worse forces stirring on the solstice, with it being a good time for dark magic, and all—something that could awaken if Hera were sacrificed on that day. And this mistress who’s controlling the storm spirits, the one who wants to kill all the demigods—”

“Might be that weird sleeping lady,” Leo finished. “Dirt Woman fully awake? Not something I want to see.”

“But who is she?” I asked. “And what does she have to do with giants?”

Good questions, but none of them had answers. We went quiet again. The only sound other than the wind was Leo tapping, rhythm after rhythm.

Festus kept flying. The wind got colder until even I noticed it, and below us, snowy forests seemed to go on forever.

“Leo, why don’t you get some sleep?” Piper said. “You were up all night.”

Leo tried to protest, but I don’t think he had enough energy for that. “You won’t let me fall off?”

Piper patted his shoulder. “Trust me, Valdez. Beautiful people never lie.”

“Right,” he muttered. He leaned forward against the warm bronze of the dragon’s neck, and fell asleep.

Leo slept for the rest of the way, but Piper and I didn’t talk. She seemed a little uncomfortable, and to be honest, I wasn’t exactly at ease either. She was still wearing the clothes Aphrodite had gotten her, her hands resting on Leo’s saddle. I rummaged my brain for something to say to her, and found nothing. Maybe I wasn’t good at small talk.

The wind blowing past my face eased my headache. I decided I could use some rest, too. We didn’t know how often we’d get to sleep during this quest.

Finally, as the daylight faded, we saw Quebec. Piper shook Leo awake. He straightened up in his seat, rubbing his eyes, and we all look at the city on the cliff. The plains around it were dusted with snow, but the city itself glowed warmly in the winter sunset. Buildings crowded together inside high walls like a medieval town, way older than any place I remembered seeing before. In the center was an actual castle—at least, it looked like one—with massive red brick walls and a square tower with a peaked, green gabled roof.

“Tell me that’s Quebec and not Santa’s workshop,” Leo said.

“Yeah, Quebec City,” Piper confirmed. “One of the oldest cities in North America. Founded around sixteen hundred or so?”

Leo looked back at her, and eyebrow raised. “Your dad do a movie about that too?”

She made a face at him. “I read sometimes, okay? Just because Aphrodite claimed me, doesn’t mean I have to be an airhead.”

“Feisty!” Leo said. “So you know so much, what’s that castle?”

“A hotel, I think.”

Leo laughed. “No way.”

But as we got closer, I saw that Piper was right. The grand entrance was bustling with doormen, valets, and porters taking bags. Sleek black luxury cars idled in the drive. People in elegant suits and winter cloaks hurried to get out of the cold. There was some movement on the top tower.

“The North Wind is staying in a hotel?” Leo said. “That can’t be—”

“Heads up, guys,” I interrupted. “We got company!”

Rising from the top of the tower were two winged figures—angry angels, with nasty-looking swords.

Festus didn’t like them. He swooped to a halt in midair, wings beating and talons bared, and made a rumbling sound in his throat that I recognized from my dream. He was getting ready to blow fire.

“Steady, boy,” Leo muttered. Smart. Something told me the angels would not take kindly to getting torched.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “They look like storm spirits.”

The angels got closer, and I could see they were much more solid than venti. They looked like regular teenagers, except for their icy white hair and feathery purple wings. Their bronze swords were jagged, like icicles. Their faces looked similar enough that they might’ve been brothers, but they definitely weren’t twins.

One was the size of an ox, with a bright red hockey jersey, baggy sweatpants, and black leather cleats. The guy clearly had been in too many fights, because both his eyes were black, and when he bared his teeth, several of them were missing.

The other guy looked like he’d just stepped off one a rock album from the 1980s. His ice-white hair was long and feathered into a mullet. He wore pointy-toed leather shoes, designer pants that were way too tight, and a godawful silk shirt with the top three buttons open. Maybe he thought he looked like a groovy love god, but the guy couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, and he had a bad case of acne.

The angels pulled up in front of the dragon and hovered there, swords at the ready. The hockey ox grunted. “No clearance.”

“’Scuse me?” Leo said.

“You have no flight plan on file,” explained the groovy love god. On top of his other problems, he had a French accent so bad I was sure it was fake. “This is restricted airspace.”

“Destroy them?” The ox showed off his gap-toothed grin.

The dragon began to hiss steam, ready to defend them. I summoned my sword to back him up, but Leo cried,

“Hold on! Let’s have some manners here, boys. Can I at least find out who has the honor of destroying me?”

“I am Cal!” the ox grunted. He looked very proud of himself, like he’d taken a long time to memorize that sentence.

“That’s short for Calais,” the love god said. “Sadly, my brother cannot say words with more than two syllables—”

“Pizza! Hockey! Destroy!” Cal offered.

“—which includes his own name,” the love god finished.

“I am Cal,” Cal repeated. “And this is Zethes! My brother!”

“Wow,” Leo said. “That was almost three sentences, man! Way to go.”

Cal grunted, obviously pleased with himself.

“Stupid buffoon,” his brother grumbled. “They make fun of you. But no matter. I am Zethes, which is short for Zethes. And the lady there—” He winked at Piper, but the wink was more like a facial seizure. “She can call me anything she likes. Perhaps she would like to have dinner with a famous demigod before we must destroy you?”

Piper made a sound like gagging on a cough drop. “That’s … a truly horrifying offer.”

“It is no problem.” Zethes wiggled his eyebrows. “We are a very romantic people, we Boreads.”

“Boreads?” I cut in. “Do you mean, like, the sons of Boreas?”

“Ah, so you’ve heard of us!” Zethes looked pleased. “We are our father’s gatekeepers. So you understand, we cannot have unauthorized people flying in his airspace on creaky dragons, scaring the silly mortal peoples.”

He pointed below, and I saw that the mortals were starting to take notice. Several were pointing up—not with alarm, yet—more with confusion and annoyance, like the dragon was a traffic helicopter flying too low.

“Which is sadly why, unless this is an emergency landing,” Zethes said, brushing his hair out of his acne-covered face, “we will have to destroy you painfully.”

“Destroy!” Cal agreed, with a little more enthusiasm than I thought necessary.

“Wait!” Piper said. “This is an emergency landing.”

“Awww!” Cal looked so disappointed, I almost felt sorry for him. Zethes studied Piper, which of course he’d already been doing.

“How does the pretty girl decide this is an emergency, then?”

“We have to see Boreas. It’s totally urgent! Please?” She forced a smile, which I figured must’ve been killing her; but she still had the blessing of Aphrodite, and she looked great. Something about her voice, too—I found myself believing every word. I nodded.

Zethes picked at his silk shirt, probably making sure it was still open wide enough.

“Well … I hate to disappoint a lovely lady, but you see, my sister, she would have an avalanche if we allowed you—”

“And our dragon is malfunctioning!” Piper added. “It could crash any minute!”

Festus shuddered helpfully, then turned his head and spilled gunk out of his ear, splattering a black Mercedes in the parking lot below.

“No destroy?” Cal whimpered.

Zethes pondered the problem. Then he gave Piper another spasmodic wink.

“Well, you are pretty. I mean, you’re right. A malfunctioning dragon—this could be an emergency.”

“Destroy them later?” Cal offered, which was probably as close to friendly as he ever got.

“It will take some explaining,” Zethes decided. “Father has not been kind to visitors lately. But, yes. Come, faulty dragon people. Follow us.”

The Boreads sheathed their swords and pulled smaller weapons from their belts—or at least I thought they were weapons. Then the Boreads switched them on, and I realized they were flashlights with orange cones, like the ones traffic controller guys use on a runway. Cal and Zethes turned and swooped toward the hotel’s tower.

Leo turned to us. “I love these guys. Follow them?”

I wasn’t all that eager.

“I guess,” I decided. “We’re here now. But I wonder why Boreas hasn’t been kind to visitors.”

“Pfft, he just hasn’t met us.” Leo whistled. “Festus, after those flashlights!”

As we got closer, I worried we’d crash into the tower. The Boreads made right for the green gabled peak and didn’t slow down. Then a section of the slanted roof slid open, revealing an entrance easily wide enough for Festus. The top and bottom were lined with icicles like jagged teeth.

“This cannot be good,” I muttered, but Leo spurred the dragon downward, and we swooped in after the Boreads.

We landed in what must have been the penthouse suite; but the place had been hit by a flash freeze. The entry hall had vaulted ceilings forty feet high, huge draped windows, and lush oriental carpets. A staircase at the back of the room led up to another equally massive hall, and more corridors branched off to the left and right. But the ice made the room’s beauty a little frightening. When I slid off the dragon, the carpet crunched under my feet. A fine layer of frost covered the furniture. The curtains didn’t budge because they were frozen solid, and the ice-coated windows let in weird watery light from the sunset. Even the ceiling was furry with icicles. As for the stairs, I was sure I’d slip and break my neck if I tried to climb them.

“Guys,” Leo said, “fix the thermostat in here, and I would totally move in.”

“Not me.” My instincts were going crazy, and the pain behind my eyes persisted I looked at the staircase. “Something feels wrong. Something up there …”

Festus shuddered and snorted flames. Frost started to form on his scales.

“No, no, no.” Zethes marched over, though how he could walk in those pointy leather shoes, I had no idea. “The dragon must be deactivated. We can’t have fire in here. The heat ruins my hair.”

Festus growled and spun his drill-bit teeth.

“’S’okay, boy.” Leo turned to Zethes. “The dragon’s a little touchy about the whole deactivation concept. But I’ve got a better solution.”

“Destroy?” Cal suggested.

“No, man. You gotta stop with the destroy talk. Just wait.”

“Leo,” Piper said nervously, “what are you—”

“Watch and learn, beauty queen. When I was repairing Festus last night, I found all kinds of buttons. Some, you do not want to know what they do. But others … Ah, here we go.”

Leo hooked his fingers behind the dragon’s left foreleg. He pulled a switch, and the dragon shuddered from head to toe. We all backed away as Festus folded like origami. His bronze plating stacked together. His neck and tail contracted into his body. His wings collapsed and his trunk compacted until he was a rectangular metal wedge the size of a suitcase.

Leo tried to lift it, but Festus must have weighed tons.

“Um … yeah. Hold on. I think—aha.” He pushed another button. A handle flipped up on the top, and wheels clicked out on the bottom. “Ta-da!” he announced. “The world’s heaviest carry-on bag!”

“That’s impossible,” I said, amazed. “Something that big couldn’t—”

“Stop!” Zethes ordered. He and Cal both drew their swords and glared at Leo. Leo raised his hands.

“Okay … what’d I do? Stay calm, guys. If it bothers you that much, I don’t have to take the dragon as carry-on—”

“Who are you?” Zethes shoved the point of his sword against Leo’s chest. “A child of the South Wind, spying on us?”

“What? No!” Leo said. “Son of Hephaestus. Friendly blacksmith, no harm to anyone!”

Cal growled. He put his face up to Leo’s. “Smell fire,” he said. “Fire is bad.”

My heart skipped a beat. Fire. Leo could control fire, and these guys didn’t like it at all.

“Oh.” Leo seemed to be trying his best not to look suspicious. “Yeah, well … my clothes are kind of singed, and I’ve been working with oil, and—”

“No!” Zethes pushed Leo back at sword point. “We can smell fire, demigod. We assumed it was from the creaky dragon, but now the dragon is a suitcase. And I still smell fire … on you.”

I reached into my pocket for the golden coin.

“Hey … look … I don’t know—” Leo looked desperate, and I was this close to summoning my weapon. “Guys, a little help?”

I stepped forward, looking directly at Zethes. “Look, there’s been a mistake. Leo isn’t a fire guy. Tell them, Leo. Tell them you’re not a fire guy.”

“Um …” Dammit, Leo, I thought. He clearly couldn’t lie under pressure.

“Zethes?” Piper tried her dazzling smile again, though she looked a little too nervous and cold to pull it off. “We’re all friends here. Put down your swords and let’s talk.”

“The girl is pretty,” Zethes admitted, “and of course she cannot help being attracted to my amazingness; but sadly, I cannot romance her at this time.” He poked his sword point farther into Leo’s chest, and there was frost spreading over his shirt.

“Destroy him now?” Cal asked his brother.

Zethes nodded. “Sadly, I think—”

“No,” Jason insisted. I hoped I sounded calm enough, I was about two seconds away from flipping that coin and getting us out of there by force. “Leo’s just a son of Hephaestus. He’s no threat. Piper here is a daughter of Aphrodite. I’m the son of Zeus. We’re on a peaceful …”

I faltered. Both Boreads had suddenly turned on me. Their eyes were piercing like icicles.

“What did you say?” Zethes demanded. “You are the son of Zeus?”

“Um … yeah,” I said. “That’s a good thing, right? My name is Jason.”

Cal looked so surprised, he almost dropped his sword. “Can’t be Jason,” he said. “Doesn’t look the same.”

Zethes stepped forward and squinted at my face. His breath was cold. “No, he is not our Jason. Our Jason was more stylish. Not as much as me—but stylish. Besides, our Jason died millennia ago.”

“Wait,” I said. “Your Jason … you mean the original Jason? The Golden Fleece guy?”

“Of course,” Zethes said. “We were his crewmates aboard his ship, the Argo, in the old times, when we were mortal demigods. Then we accepted immortality to serve our father, so I could look this good for all time, and my silly brother could enjoy pizza and hockey.”

“Hockey!” Cal agreed.

“But Jason—our Jason—he died a mortal death,” Zethes said. “You can’t be him.”

“I’m not,” I agreed.

“So, destroy?” Cal asked. Clearly the conversation was giving his two brain cells a serious workout.

“No,” Zethes said regretfully. “If he is a son of Zeus, he could be the one we’ve been watching for.”

“Watching for?” Leo asked. “You mean like in a good way: you’ll shower him with fabulous prizes? Or watching for like in a bad way: he’s in trouble?”

A girl’s voice said, “That depends on my father’s will.”

I looked up the staircase. At the top stood a girl in a white silk dress. Her skin was unnaturally pale, the color of snow, but her hair was a lush mane of black, and her eyes were coffee brown. She looked at us with no expression, no smile, no friendliness. She seemed to understand the situation immediately.

“Father will want to see the one called Jason,” she said. Yay, me.

“Then it is him?” Zethes asked excitedly.

“We’ll see,” the girl said. “Zethes, bring our guests.”

I got ready to climb up the stairs, but the girl glared at Leo.

“Not you, Leo Valdez,” she said. That bugged me. How did she know his name

“Why not?” Leo complained.

“You cannot be in the presence of my father,” the girl said. “Fire and ice—it would not be wise.”

“We’re going together,” I insisted, putting a hand on Leo’s shoulder, “or not at all.”

The girl tilted her head, like she wasn’t used to people refusing her orders.

“He will not be harmed, Jason Grace, unless you make trouble. Calais, keep Leo Valdez here. Guard him, but do not kill him.”

A chill went down my spine. She knew me. But I had never seen her before in my life. What did she know?

Cal pouted. “Just a little?”

“No,” the girl insisted. “And take care of his interesting suitcase, until Father passes judgment.”

I looked at Leo, trying to ask a silent question: _How do you want to play this?_

Leo hesitated.

“It’s fine, guys,” he said finally. “No sense causing trouble if we don’t have to. You go ahead.”

“Listen to your friend,” the pale girl said. “Leo Valdez will be perfectly safe. I wish I could say the same for you, son of Zeus. Now come, King Boreas is waiting.”


	8. I give a guy schizophrenia

I didn’t want to leave Leo, but I was starting to think that hanging out with Cal the hockey jock might be the least dangerous option in this place.

As we climbed the icy staircase, Zethes stayed behind us, his blade drawn. The guy might’ve looked like a disco-era reject, but there was nothing funny about his sword. I figured one hit from that thing would probably turn me into a Popsicle.

Then there was the ice princess. Every once in a while she’d turn and give me a smile, but there was no warmth in her expression. She regarded me like I was an especially interesting science specimen—one she couldn’t wait to dissect.

If these were Boreas’s kids, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet Daddy. Annabeth had said that Boreas was the friendliest of the wind gods. Apparently that meant he didn’t kill heroes quite as fast as the others did.

I hoped I hadn’t just led my friends into a trap. If things went bad, I wasn’t sure I could get them out alive. Without thinking about it, I took Piper’s hand for reassurance. I blushed. The apology died in my throat. I tried to get my hand away.

Piper raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t let go.

“It’ll be fine,” she promised. “Just a talk, right?”

At the top of the stairs, the ice princess looked back and noticed us holding hands. Her smile faded. Suddenly my hand in Piper’s turned ice cold—burning cold. I let go, and my fingers were smoking with frost. So were Piper’s.

“Warmth is not a good idea here,” the princess advised, “especially when I am your best chance of staying alive. Please, this way.”

Piper gave me a nervous frown like, _What was that about?_

I didn’t have an answer. Zethes poked me in the back with his icicle sword, and we followed the princess down a massive hallway decked in frosty tapestries.

Freezing winds blew back and forth, and my thoughts moved almost as fast. I’d had a lot of time to think while we rode the dragon north, but I felt as confused as ever, and my headache showed no signs of fading.

Thalia’s picture was still in my pocket, of course, though I didn’t need to look at it anymore. Her image had burned itself into my mind. Thalia looked nothing like me. We both had blue eyes, but that was it. Her hair was black. Her complexion was more Mediterranean. Her facial features were sharper—like a hawk’s.

Still, she looked so familiar. Hera had left me just enough memory that I could be certain Thalia was my sister, but Annabeth had acted completely surprised when I’d told her, like she’d never heard of Thalia’s having a brother. Did Thalia even know about me? How had we been separated?

I tried to calm myself down. This was not the moment to think about that.

But I couldn’t help it. Hera had taken my memories. I couldn’t just let it go. I didn’t care that we were probably going to get killed by Boreas’ kids, the gap was still there, pounding in my head. I demanded to be noticed.

Hera had stolen everything from my past, plopped me into a new life, and now she expected me to save her from some prison just so I could get back what she’d taken. It made me so angry, I wanted to walk away, let Hera rot in that cage: but I couldn’t. I was hooked. I had to know more, and that made me even more angry. Why would I have to do this? Who did she think she was?

“Hey.” Piper touched my arm. “You still with me?”

I blinked. “Yeah … yeah, sorry.”

I was grateful for Piper. I needed a friend, and I was glad she’d decided to stick with me, even after how much the tricks of the Mist had hurt her. I was sure that we’d never known each other before the Great Canyon, but I was all in for being friends with her now.

Still, I didn’t want to go too far. It wasn’t fair to Piper, nor to whatever I’d left behind.

At the end of the hallway, we found ourselves in front of a set of oaken doors carved with a map of the world. In each corner was a man’s bearded face, blowing wind. I was pretty sure I’d seen maps like this before. But in this version, all the wind guys were Winter, blowing ice and snow from every corner of the world.

The princess turned. Her brown eyes glittered, and I felt like I was a Christmas present she was hoping to open. Great. I’d just gotten rid of Drew, and I ran directly into this one.

“This is the throne room,” she said. “Be on your best behavior, Jason Grace. My father can be … chilly. I will translate for you, and try to encourage him to hear you out. I do hope he spares you. We could have such fun.”

I guessed this girl’s definition of fun was not the same as mine. “Um, okay,” I managed. “But really, we’re just here for a little talk. We’ll be leaving right afterward.”

The girl smiled. “I love heroes. So blissfully ignorant.”

Piper rested her hand on her dagger. “Well, how about you enlighten us? You say you’re going to translate for us, and we don’t even know who you are. What’s your name?”

The girl sniffed with distaste. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t recognize me. Even in the ancient times the Greeks did not know me well. Their island homes were too warm, too far from my domain. I am Khione, daughter of Boreas, goddess of snow.”

She stirred the air with her finger, and a miniature blizzard swirled around her—big, fluffy flakes as soft as cotton.

“Now, come,” Khione said. The oaken doors blew open, and cold blue light spilled out of the room. “Hopefully, you will survive your little talk.”

If the entry hall had been cold, the throne room was like a meat locker.

Mist hung in the air. I shivered, and my breath steamed. Along the walls, purple tapestries showed scenes of snowy forests, barren mountains, and glaciers. High above, ribbons of colored light—the aurora borealis—pulsed along the ceiling. A layer of snow covered the floor, so I had to step carefully. All around the room stood life-size ice sculpture warriors—some in Greek armor, some medieval, some in modern camouflage—all frozen in various attack positions, swords raised, guns locked and loaded.

At least I _thought_ they were sculptures. Then I tried to step between two Greek spearmen, and they moved with surprising speed, their joints cracking and spraying ice crystals as they crossed their javelins to block the path.

From the far end of the hall, a man’s voice rang out in a language that sounded like French. The room was so long and misty, I couldn’t see the other end; but whatever the man said, the ice guards uncrossed their javelins.

“It’s fine,” Khione said. “My father has ordered them not to kill you just yet.”

“Super,” I said. Zethes prodded me in the back with his sword.

“Keep moving, Jason Junior.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“My father is not a patient man,” Zethes warned, “and the beautiful Piper, sadly, is losing her magic beauty very fast. Later, perhaps, I can lend her something from my wide assortment of hair products.”

“Thanks,” Piper grumbled.

We kept walking, and the mist parted to reveal a man on an ice throne. He was sturdily built, dressed in a stylish white suit that seemed woven from snow, with dark purple wings that spread out to either side. His long hair and shaggy beard were encrusted with icicles, so I couldn’t tell if his hair was gray or just white with frost. His arched eyebrows made him look angry, but his eyes twinkled more warmly than his daughter’s—as if he might have a sense of humor buried somewhere under that permafrost. I hoped so.

“ _Bienvenu_ ,” the king said. “ _Je suis Boreas le Roi. Et vous_?”

Khione the snow goddess was about to speak, but Piper stepped forward and curtsied.

“ _Votre Majesté_ ,” she said, “ _je suis Piper McLean. Et c’est Jason, fils de Zeus_.”

The king smiled with pleasant surprise. “ _Vous parlez français? Très bien!_ ”

“Piper, you speak French?” I asked.

Piper frowned. “No. Why?”

“You just spoke French.”

Piper blinked. “I did?”

The king said something else, and Piper nodded. “ _Oui, Votre Majesté_.”

The king laughed and clapped his hands, obviously delighted. He said a few more sentences then swept his hand toward his daughter as if shooing her away. Khione looked miffed.

“The king says—”

“He says I’m a daughter of Aphrodite,” Piper interrupted, “so naturally I can speak French, which is the language of love. I had no idea. His Majesty says Khione won’t have to translate now.”

Behind them, Zethes snorted, and Khione shot him a murderous look. She bowed stiffly to her father and took a step back. The king sized me up, and I decided it would be a good idea to bow.

“Your Majesty, I’m Jason Grace. Thank you for, um, not killing us. May I ask … why does a Greek god speak French?”

Piper had another exchange with the king.

“He speaks the language of his host country,” Piper translated. “He says all gods do this. Most Greek gods speak English, as they now reside in the United States, but Boreas was never welcomed in their realm. His domain was always far to the north. These days he likes Quebec, so he speaks French.”

The king said something else, and Piper turned pale.

“The king says …” She faltered. “He says—”

“Oh, allow me,” Khione said. “My father says he has orders to kill you. Did I not mention that earlier?”

I tensed. The king was still smiling amiably, like he’d just delivered great news.

“Kill us?” I said. “Why?”

“Because,” the king said, in heavily accented English, “my lord Aeolus has commanded it.”

Boreas rose. He stepped down from his throne and furled his wings against his back. As he approached, Khione and Zethes bowed. Piper and I followed their example.

“I shall deign to speak your language,” Boreas said, “as Piper McLean has honored me in mine. _Toujours_ , I have had a fondness for the children of Aphrodite. As for you, Jason Grace, my master Aeolus would not expect me to kill a son of Lord Zeus … without first hearing you out.”

MY gold coin seemed to grow heavy in my pocket. If we were forced to fight, I didn’t like our chances. Two seconds at least to summon my blade. Then I’d be facing a god, two of his children, and an army of freeze-dried warriors. And Piper and Leo had no training. I couldn’t protect them alone. I promised myself that, if we got out of this, I’d train them both.

“Aeolus is the master of the winds, right?” I asked. “Why would he want us dead?”

“You are demigods,” Boreas said, as if this explained everything. “Aeolus’s job is to contain the winds, and demigods have always caused him many headaches. They ask him for favors. They unleash winds and cause chaos. But the final insult was the battle with Typhon last summer…”

Boreas waved his hand, and a sheet of ice like a flat-screen TV appeared in the air. Images of a battle flickered across the surface—a giant wrapped in storm clouds, wading across a river toward the Manhattan skyline. Tiny, glowing figures—the gods, I guessed—swarmed around him like angry wasps, pounding the monster with lightning and fire. Finally the river erupted in a massive whirlpool, and the smoky form sank beneath the waves and disappeared.

“The storm giant, Typhon,” Boreas explained. “The first time the gods defeated him, eons ago, he did not die quietly. His death released a host of storm spirits—wild winds that answered to no one. It was Aeolus’s job to track them all down and imprison them in his fortress. The other gods—they did not help. They did not even apologize for the inconvenience. It took Aeolus centuries to track down all the storm spirits, and naturally this irritated him. Then, last summer, Typhon was defeated again—”

“And his death released another wave of venti,” I guessed. “Which made Aeolus even angrier.”

“ _C’est vrai_ ,” Boreas agreed.

“But, Your Majesty,” Piper said, “the gods had no choice but to battle Typhon. He was going to destroy Olympus! Besides, why punish demigods for that?”

The king shrugged. “Aeolus cannot take out his anger on the gods. They are his bosses, and very powerful. So he gets even with the demigods who helped them in the war. He issued orders to us: demigods who come to us for aid are no longer to be tolerated. We are to crush your little mortal faces.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“That sounds … extreme,” I ventured. “But you’re not going to crush our faces yet, right? You’re going to listen to us first, ’cause once you hear about our quest—”

“Yes, yes,” the king agreed. “You see, Aeolus also said that a son of Zeus might seek my aid, and if this happened, I should listen to you before destroying you, as you might—how did he put it? —make all our lives very interesting. I am only obligated to listen, however. After that, I am free to pass judgment as I see fit. But I will listen first. Khione wishes this also. It may be that we will not kill you.”

I felt like he could almost breathe again. “Great. Thanks.”

“Do not thank me.” Boreas smiled. “There are many ways you could make our lives interesting. Sometimes we keep demigods for our amusement, as you can see.”

He gestured around the room to the various ice statues. Piper made a strangled noise.

“You mean—they’re all demigods? Frozen demigods? They’re alive?”

“An interesting question,” Boreas conceded, as if it had never occurred to him before. “They do not move unless they are obeying my orders. The rest of the time, they are merely frozen. Unless they were to melt, I suppose, which would be very messy.”

Khione stepped behind me and put her cold fingers on my neck. I shivered.

“My father gives me such lovely presents,” she murmured in my ear. “Join our court. Perhaps I’ll let your friends go.”

Nope, I couldn’t breathe anymore. I really, really wanted to get out of there.

“What?” Zethes broke in. “If Khione gets this one, then I deserve the girl. Khione always gets more presents!”

“Now, children,” Boreas said sternly. “Our guests will think you are spoiled! Besides, you moved too fast. We have not even heard the demigod’s story yet. Then we will decide what to do with them. Please, Jason Grace, entertain us.”

I could feel my brain shutting down. Too much work lately, I guess. I didn’t look at Piper for fear I’d completely lose it. I’d gotten them into this, and now we were going die —or worse, we’d be amusements for Boreas’s children and end up frozen forever in this throne room, slowly corroding from freezer burn.

Khione purred and stroked his neck. I didn’t exactly plan it, but electricity sparked along my skin. There was loud _pop_ , and Khione flew backward, skidding across the floor. I felt some of the tension slide off my shoulders. Thinking without her eyes sizing me up was a much easier task.

Zethes laughed. “That is good! I’m glad you did that, even though I have to kill you now.”

For a moment, Khione was too stunned to react. Then the air around her began to swirl with a micro-blizzard. “You dare—”

“Stop,” I ordered, with as much force as I could muster. “You’re not going to kill us. And you’re not going to keep us. We’re on a quest for the queen of the gods herself, so unless you want Hera busting down your doors, you’re going to let us go.”

I sounded a lot more confident than I felt, but it got their attention. Khione’s blizzard swirled to a stop. Zethes lowered his sword. They both looked uncertainly at their father.

“Hmm,” Boreas said. His eyes twinkled, but I couldn’t tell if it was with anger or amusement. “A son of Zeus, favored by Hera? This is definitely a first. Tell us your story.”

I would’ve botched it right there. I hadn’t been expecting to get the chance to talk, and now that I could, my voice abandoned him.

Piper saved me. “Your Majesty.” She curtsied again with incredible poise, considering her life was on the line. She told Boreas the whole story, from the Grand Canyon to the prophecy, much better and faster than I could have.

“All we ask for is guidance,” Piper concluded. “These storm spirits attacked us, and they’re working for some evil mistress. If we find them, maybe we can find Hera.”

The king stroked the icicles in his beard. Out the windows, night had fallen, and the only light came from the aurora borealis overhead, washing everything in red and blue.

“I know of these storm spirits,” Boreas said. “I know where they are kept, and of the prisoner they took.”

“You mean Coach Hedge?” I asked. “He’s alive?”

Boreas waved aside the question. “For now. But the one who controls these storm winds … It would be madness to oppose her. You would be better staying here as frozen statues.”

“Hera’s in trouble,” I said. “In three days she’s going to be—I don’t know—consumed, destroyed, something. And a giant is going to rise.”

“Yes,” Boreas agreed. Was it my imagination, or did he shoot Khione an angry look? “Many horrible things are waking. Even my children do not tell me all the news they should. The Great Stirring of monsters that began with Kronos—your father Zeus foolishly believed it would end when the Titans were defeated. But just as it was before, so it is now. The final battle is yet to come, and the one who will wake is more terrible than any Titan. Storm spirits—these are only beginning. The earth has many more horrors to yield up. When monsters no longer stay in Tartarus, and souls are no longer confined to Hades … Olympus has good reason to fear.”

I wasn’t sure what all this meant, but I didn’t like the way Khione was smiling—like this was her definition of fun.

“So you’ll help us?” I asked the king.

Boreas scowled. “I did not say that.”

“Please, Your Majesty,” Piper said.

Everyone’s eyes turned toward her. She had to be scared out of her mind, but she looked beautiful and confident—and it had nothing to do with the blessing of Aphrodite. She had lost the pink aura, but she almost glowed with warmth in that cold throne room. “If you tell us where the storm spirits are, we can capture them and bring them to Aeolus. You’d look good in front of your boss. Aeolus might pardon us and the other demigods. We could even rescue Gleeson Hedge. Everyone wins.”

“She’s pretty,” Zethes mumbled. “I mean, she’s right.”

“Father, don’t listen to her,” Khione said. “She’s a child of Aphrodite. She dares to charmspeak a god? Freeze her now!”

Boreas considered this. I slipped his hand in my pocket and got ready to bring out the gold coin. If things went wrong, I’d have to move fast.

The movement caught Boreas’s eye. “What is that on your forearm, demigod?”

I hadn’t realized my coat sleeve had gotten pushed up, revealing the edge of the tattoo. Reluctantly, I showed Boreas my marks.

The god’s eyes widened. Khione actually hissed and stepped away, which made me very happy.

Then Boreas did something unexpected. He laughed so loudly, an icicle cracked from the ceiling and crashed next to his throne. The god’s form began to flicker. His beard disappeared. He grew taller and thinner, and his clothes changed into a Roman toga, lined with purple. His head was crowned with a frosty laurel wreath, and a gladius—a Roman sword like mine—hung at his side.

“Aquilon,” I said. The name just got out, and my brain jumped, getting back to the usual headache. It was the god’s Roman name. Why did I know so many Roman things?

Aquilon inclined his head. “You recognize me better in this form, yes? And yet you said you came from Camp Half-Blood?”

I shifted my feet. “Uh … yes, Your Majesty.”

“And Hera sent you there…” The winter god’s eyes were full of mirth. “I understand now. Oh, she plays a dangerous game. Bold, but dangerous! No wonder Olympus is closed. They must be trembling at the gamble she has taken.”

“Jason,” Piper said nervously, “why did Boreas change shape? The toga, the wreath. What’s going on?”

“It’s his Roman form,” I said. “But what’s going on—I don’t know.”

The god laughed. “No, I’m sure you don’t. This should be very interesting to watch.”

“Does that mean you’ll let us go?” Piper asked.

“My dear,” Boreas said, “there is no reason for me to kill you. If Hera’s plan fails, which I think it will, you will tear each other apart. Aeolus will never have to worry about demigods again.”

I felt as if Khione’s cold fingers were on his neck again, but it wasn’t her—it was just the feeling that Boreas was right. That sense of wrongness that had bothered me since I got to Camp Half-Blood, and Chiron’s comment about my arrival being disastrous—Boreas knew what they meant.

“I don’t suppose you could explain?” I asked.

“Oh, perish the thought! It is not for me to interfere in Hera’s plan. No wonder she took your memory.” Boreas chuckled, apparently still having a great time imagining demigods tearing each other apart. “You know, I have a reputation as a helpful wind god. Unlike my brethren, I’ve been known to fall in love with mortals. Why, my sons Zethes and Calais started as demigods—”

“Which explains why they are idiots,” Khione growled.

“Stop it!” Zethes snapped back. “Just because you were born a full goddess—”

“Both of you, freeze,” Boreas ordered. Apparently, that word carried a lot of weight in the household, because the two siblings went absolutely still. “Now, as I was saying, I have a good reputation, but it is rare that Boreas plays an important role in the affairs of gods. I sit here in my palace, at the edge of civilization, and so rarely have amusements. Why, even that fool Notus, the South Wind, gets spring break in Cancún. What do I get? A winter festival with naked Québécois rolling around in the snow!”

“I like the winter festival,” Zethes muttered.

“My point,” Boreas snapped, “is that I now have a chance to be the center. Oh, yes, I will let you go on this quest. You will find your storm spirits in the windy city, of course. Chicago—”

“Father!” Khione protested. Boreas ignored his daughter.

“If you can capture the winds, you may be able to gain safe entrance to the court of Aeolus. If by some miracle you succeed, be sure to tell him you captured the winds on my orders.”

“Okay, sure,” I said. “So Chicago is where we’ll find this lady who’s controlling the winds? She’s the one who’s trapped Hera?”

“Ah.” Boreas grinned. “Those are two different questions, son of Jupiter.”

Jupiter. Before, he had called me son of Zeus _._ For some reason, the change of name felt right.

“The one who controls the winds,” Boreas continued, “yes, you will find her in Chicago. But she is only a servant—a servant who is very likely to destroy you. If you succeed against her and take the winds, then you may go to Aeolus. Only he has knowledge of all the winds on the earth. All secrets come to his fortress eventually. If anyone can tell you where Hera is imprisoned, it is Aeolus. As for who you will meet when you finally find Hera’s cage —truly, if I told you that, you would beg me to freeze you.”

“Father,” Khione protested, “you can’t simply let them—”

“I can do what I like,” he said, his voice hardening. “I am still master here, am I not?”

The way Boreas glared at his daughter, it was obvious they had some ongoing argument. Khione’s eyes flashed with anger, but she clenched her teeth. “As you wish, Father.”

“Now go, demigods,” Boreas said, “before I change my mind. Zethes, escort them out safely.”

We all bowed, and the god of the North Wind dissolved into mist.

Back in the entry hall, Cal and Leo were waiting for us. Leo looked cold but unharmed. He’d even gotten cleaned up, and his clothes looked newly washed, like he’d used the hotel’s valet service. Festus the dragon was back in normal form, snorting fire over his scales to keep himself defrosted.

As Khione led us down the stairs, I noticed that Leo’s eyes followed her. Leo started combing his hair back with his hands. _Uh-oh_ , I thought. I made a mental note to warn Leo about the snow goddess later. She was not someone to get a crush on.

At the bottom step, Khione turned to Piper. “You have fooled my father, girl. But you have not fooled me. We are not done. And you, Jason Grace, I will see you as a statue in the throne room soon enough.”

“Boreas is right,” I said. “You’re a spoiled kid. See you around, ice princess.”

Khione’s eyes flared pure white. For once, she seemed at a loss for words. She stormed back up the stairs—literally. Halfway up, she turned into a blizzard and disappeared.

“Be careful,” Zethes warned. “She never forgets an insult.”

Cal grunted in agreement. “Bad sister.”

“She’s the goddess of snow,” I said. “What’s she going to do, throw snowballs at us?” But as I said it, I had a feeling Khione could do a whole lot worse.

Leo looked devastated. “What happened up there? You made her mad? Is she mad at me too? Guys, that was my prom date!”

“We’ll explain later,” Piper promised, but when she glanced at me, I realized she expected me to explain. What had happened up there? I wasn’t sure. Boreas had turned into Aquilon, his Roman form, as if my presence caused him to go schizophrenic. And I had recognized him. The idea that I had been sent to Camp Half-Blood seemed to amuse the god, but Boreas/Aquilon hadn’t let us go out of kindness. Cruel excitement had danced in his eyes, as if he’d just placed a bet on a dogfight.

_You will tear each other apart, he’d said with delight. Aeolus will never have to worry about demigods again._ I looked away from Piper, trying not to show how unnerved I was.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “we’ll explain later.”

“Be careful, pretty girl,” Zethes said. “The winds between here and Chicago are bad-tempered. Many other evil things are stirring. I am sorry you will not be staying. You would make a lovely ice statue, in which I could check my reflection.”

“Thanks,” Piper said. “But I’d sooner play hockey with Cal.”

“Hockey?” Cal’s eyes lit up.

“Joking,” Piper said. “And the storm winds aren’t our worst problem, are they?”

“Oh, no,” Zethes agreed. “Something else. Something worse.”

“Worse,” Cal echoed.

“Can you tell me?” Piper gave them a smile.

This time, the charm didn’t work. The purple-winged Boreads shook their heads in unison. The hangar doors opened onto a freezing starry night, and Festus the dragon stomped his feet, anxious to fly.

“Ask Aeolus what is worse,” Zethes said darkly. “He knows. Good luck.” He almost sounded like he cared what happened to them, even though a few minutes ago he’d wanted to make Piper into an ice sculpture.

Cal patted Leo on the shoulder. “Don’t get destroyed,” he said, which was probably the longest sentence he’d ever attempted. “Next time—hockey. Pizza.”

“Come on, guys.” I stared out at the dark. I was anxious to get out of that cold penthouse, but I had a feeling it was the most hospitable place we’d see for a while. “Let’s go to Chicago and try not to get destroyed.”


	9. Monocle Motors has horrible customer service

Piper didn’t relax until the glow of Quebec City faded behind us.

“You were amazing,” I told her, trying to make her feel better. But she only sighed. 

“ _Si tu savais la vérité sur moi, tu ne penserais pas que je suis si incroyable_.”

I frowned. “What’d you say?”

“I said I only talked to Boreas. It wasn’t so amazing.” She didn’t turn to look, but I smiled at her anyways. It had been pretty amazing.

“Hey,” I said, “you saved me from joining Khione’s subzero hero collection. I owe you one.”

Piper still looked bothered, but I let it pass.

“I thought I could teach you a few moves with your knife,” I said instead. “In case we get into a real fight, I guess you’d like to get a bit of training before.”

At that, she did turn around and gave me a smile. “That’d be great.”

“Hey, I want special training, too!” said Leo. “Can you fight with hammers and screwdrivers? I got a few in my belt, and I’d love to punch monsters!”

I laughed. “Sure, if you want to.”

Leo passed us some sandwiches from his pack. He’d been quiet ever since we’d told him what happened in the throne room.

“I still can’t believe Khione,” he said. “She looked so nice.”

I shivered, remembering her fingers on my neck.

“Trust me, man,” I said. “Snow may be pretty, but up close it’s cold and nasty. We’ll find you a better prom date.”

Piper smiled, but Leo didn’t look pleased. He hadn’t said much about his time in the palace, or anything about his fire powers. His mood seemed to be affecting Festus, who grumbled and steamed as he tried to keep himself warm in the cold Canadian air. Happy the Dragon was not so happy.

We ate our sandwiches as we flew. I had no idea how Leo had stocked up on supplies in the middle of the forest, but he’d even brought veggie rations for Piper. Nobody talked. Whatever we might find in Chicago, we all knew Boreas had only let us go because he figured we were already on a suicide mission.

The moon rose and stars turned overhead. I looked at them, trying to figure out if I knew anything about constellations. The shadow of a memory blinked behind my eyes, not quite there but almost visible, at the other side of the abyss: a night of sleeping under the stars, making up constellations with someone. I couldn’t see them clearly, but I knew that they were important.

Whoever this person was, I knew that I cared about them. We had laid on the ground on our sleeping bags, cold and tired, and we had been okay, because we were together. I remembered a smell: cinnamon and sandalwood.

Piper leaned back against my chest, her eyes already closing. I let her sleep, thinking of that half-memory. No more details came to mind, but for once, I didn’t care. It was enough proof that somewhere, at some time, someone had cared about me.

Piper didn’t sleep very well. She tossed and turned until Leo and I worried that she’d fall, and I held on to her with both arms. “Let him go,” she mumbled. “Take me instead.”

Leo looked back, a concerned look on his face.

“Aren’t you gonna wake her up, dude?”

I hesitated. “Demigods have real dreams all the time,” I said. “She may need to see whatever her nightmare is.”

Piper turned around again, and I held her into place. Leo kept his eyes on her.

“I’ve never had a dream like that,” he said.

I remembered the forest behind Camp Half-Blood, and Leo trapped in a net with Festus. The fire in his fingertips. It was Leo’s secret, and I knew it, even if I’d never wanted to.

“I have,” I said. “Leo-”

We crashed against the open air. Festus spun out of control, and we plummeted through the sky.

I called the wind in my help, gaining control of the currents around me. Dammit, I’d wanted to fly again, but not like this. Far below me, I saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of Festus gone haywire, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb.

Piper started to move, and Leo shot past her, screaming and frantically grabbing at the clouds. “Not coooooool!”

She grabbed at him, and I knew she was awake. I yelled, “Piper, level out! Extend your arms and legs!”

It took her a second, but she did what I said and regained some balance. She fell spread-eagle like a skydiver. I plunged toward her, and grabbed her by the waist. It should have been easy, like two days before at the Great Canyon, but the winds weren’t helping. Venti, I thought.

“We have to get Leo!” Piper shouted.

I managed to slow us down, but the venti were getting on my nerves. We lurched up and down, fighting them.

“Gonna get rough,” I warned. “Hold on!”

Piper locked her arms around me, and I shot toward the ground. Piper screamed. I kept my eyes fixed on Leo. We slammed into him, but he didn’t stop wriggling. He started cursing me out.

“Stop fighting!” I said, trying to keep my face away from his kicks. “It’s me!”

“My dragon!” Leo yelled. “You gotta save Festus!”

I was already struggling to keep the three of us aloft, and there was no way I could help a fifty-ton metal dragon. But before I could try to reason with Leo, I heard an explosion below us. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and Leo sobbed, “Festus!”

I pursed my lips, feeling all the blood rush to my head as I tried to maintain the air cushion beneath us, but intermittent slow-downs were the best I could manage. Rather than free-falling, it felt like we were bouncing down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time, which wasn’t doing my stomach any favors.

As we wobbled and zigzagged, I could make out some details of the factory complex below—warehouses, smokestacks, barbed-wire fences, and parking lots lined with snow-covered vehicles. We were still high enough so that hitting the ground would flatten them into roadkill—or skykill—when I couldn’t contain it anymore.

“I can’t—”

We dropped like stones. We hit the roof of the largest warehouse and crashed through into darkness.

I lost hold of Piper, but Leo stuck to me. A spark of training jumped into action. Grabbing Leo, I pulled us both so that we wouldn’t hit our heads. We landed on a metallic floor on our backs, in a mess of limbs.

I tried to get up, but Leo was half on top of me.

“Piper!” I called. “Where’s Piper?”

“Ow, bro!” Leo groaned. “That’s my back! I’m not a sofa! Piper, where’d you go?”

“Here,” her voice was a whimper, coming from a level above us.

Leo found metal stairs, and we went up them as fast as we could.

Piper was on a metal catwalk that ringed the warehouse interior. Leo and I had landed on ground level. The hole we’d made in the roof was a ragged starburst twenty feet above. How we’d even survived that drop, I had no idea. Hanging from the ceiling, a few electric bulbs flickered dimly, but they didn’t do much to light the enormous space. Next to Piper, the corrugated metal wall was emblazoned with a company logo, but it was almost completely spray-painted over with graffiti. Down in the shadowy warehouse, I could make out huge machines, robotic arms, half-finished trucks on an assembly line. The place looked like it had been abandoned for years.

We reached Piper.

Leo started to ask, “You okay …?” Then we saw her foot. “Oh no, you’re not.”

“Thanks for the reassurance,” Piper groaned.

“You’ll be fine,” I said, though I wasn’t all that sure. Piper would recover, but we’d lost Festus. And the venti fighting against us had left me more tired than I was willing to admit. “Leo, you got any first aid supplies?”

“Yeah—yeah, sure.” He dug around in his tool belt and pulled out a wad of gauze and a roll of duct tape—both of which seemed too big for the belt’s pockets. I had noticed the tool belt yesterday morning, but I hadn’t thought to ask Leo about it. It didn’t look like anything special—just one of those wraparound leather aprons with a bunch of pockets, like a blacksmith or a carpenter might wear. And it seemed to be empty.

“How did you—” Piper tried to sit up, and winced. “How did pull that stuff from an empty belt?”

“Magic,” Leo said. “Haven’t figured it out completely, but I can summon just about any regular tool out of the pockets, plus some other helpful stuff.”

He reached into another pocket and pulled out a little tin box. “Breath mint?”

I snatched away the mints. “That’s great, Leo. Now, can you fix her foot?”

“I’m a mechanic, man. Maybe if she was a car …” He snapped his fingers. “Wait, what was that godly healing stuff they fed you at camp—Rambo food?”

“Ambrosia, dummy,” Piper said through gritted teeth. “There should be some in my bag, if it’s not crushed.”

I carefully pulled her backpack off her shoulders. I rummaged through the supplies the Aphrodite kids had packed for Piper, and found a Ziploc full of smashed pastry squares like lemon bars. I broke off a piece and gave it to her. Piper’s face relaxed. “More,” she said.

I frowned. “Piper, we shouldn’t risk it. They said too much could burn you up. I think I should try to set your foot.”

Piper looked sick. “Have you ever done that before?”

Instincts had taken over again. Had I ever done this with my friend? To myself? I had no idea. “Yeah … I think so.”

Leo found an old piece of wood and broke it in half for a splint. Then he got the gauze and duct tape ready.

“Hold her leg still,” I told him. “Piper, this is going to hurt.”

When I set the foot, Piper flinched so hard she punched Leo in the arm, and he yelled almost as much as she did. I splinted her ankle with plywood, gauze, and duct tape. It was like my hands were moving on their own.

“Ow,” Piper said.

“Jeez, beauty queen!” Leo rubbed his arm. “Glad my face wasn’t there.”

“Sorry,” she said. “And don’t call me ‘beauty queen,’ or I’ll punch you again.”

“You both did great.”

I found a canteen in Piper’s pack and gave her some water.

“What happened to the dragon?” she asked. “Where are we?”

Leo’s expression turned sullen. “I don’t know with Festus. He just jerked sideways like he hit an invisible wall and started to fall.”

Leo pointed to the logo on the wall. “As far as where we are …”

It was hard to see through the graffiti, but I could make out a large red eye with the stenciled words: monocle motors, assembly plant 1.

“Closed car plant,” Leo said. “I’m guessing we crash-landed in Detroit.”

I had heard about closed car plants in Detroit, so that made sense. But it seemed like a pretty depressing place to land. “How far is that from Chicago?”

I handed her the canteen. “Maybe three-fourths of the way from Quebec? The thing is, without the dragon, we’re stuck traveling overland.”

“No way,” Leo said. “It isn’t safe.”

“He’s right,” Piper said. “Besides, I don’t know if I can walk. And three people—Jason, you can’t fly that many across country by yourself.”

“No way,” I said. “Leo, are you sure the dragon didn’t malfunction? I mean, Festus is old, and—”

“And I might not have repaired him right?”

“I didn’t say that,” I protested. I knew that it wasn’t a malfunction. It was just the small hope that maybe we weren’t being attacked. “It’s just—maybe you could fix it.”

“I don’t know.” Leo sounded crestfallen. He pulled a few screws out of his pockets and started fiddling with them. “I’d have to find where he landed, if he’s even in one piece.”

“It was my fault.” Piper said. She looked miserable. I remembered her nightmare, and made a mental note to ask her later, when we weren’t in a creepy factory anymore.

“Piper,” I said, as gently as I could, “you were asleep when Festus conked out. It couldn’t be your fault.”

“Yeah, you’re just shaken up,” Leo agreed. He didn’t even try to make a joke at her expense. “You’re in pain. Just rest.”

Leo stood. “Look, um, Jason, why don’t you stay with her, bro? I’ll scout around for Festus. I think he fell outside the warehouse somewhere. If I can find him, maybe I can figure out what happened and fix him.”

“It’s too dangerous,” I said. “You shouldn’t go by yourself.”

“Ah, I got duct tape and breath mints. I’ll be fine,” Leo said, a little too quickly, and I realized he was a lot more shaken up than he was letting on. “You guys just don’t run off without me.”

I nodded. “Okay. But let’s make a code if you need us to go there. Three taps, and then two.”

Leo shrugged. “Sure, chief.”

He reached into his magic tool belt, pulled out a flashlight, and headed down the stairs, leaving Piper and I alone. I managed to smile at Piper, but remained alert. Something about this place made my hair stand. I just didn’t know if it was the wind or something else.

“You look better,” I offered. Piper didn’t look at me for a second.

“You did a good job,” she said. “Where’d you learn first aid?”

I shrugged. “Same answer as always. I don’t know.”

“But you’re starting to have some memories, aren’t you? Like that prophecy in Latin back at camp, or that dream about the wolf.”

“It’s fuzzy,” I admitted. “Like déjà vu. Ever forgotten a word or a name, and you know it should be on the tip of your tongue, but it isn’t? It’s like that—only with my whole life.”

Piper nodded. I guess she kind of understood what I meant. She had forgotten the last three months of her life – or at least she’d forgotten what they actually had been like. I tried not to think about the fact that she’d thought we were dating.

I bit back a yawn. I hadn’t slept on Festus, and the struggle with the venti had left me exhausted.

“That photo in your pocket,” Piper said suddenly. “Is that someone from your past?”

I jumped. Thalia.

“I’m sorry,” Piper said. “None of my business. Forget it.”

“No—it’s okay.” I managed to relax a little. “Just, I’m trying to figure things out. Her name’s Thalia. She’s my sister. I don’t remember any details. I’m not even sure how I know, but—um, why are you smiling?”

“Nothing.” Piper bit her lips. “Um, it’s just—that’s great you remembered. Annabeth told me she became a Hunter of Artemis, right?”

I nodded. “I get the feeling I’m supposed to find her. Hera left me that memory for a reason. It’s got something to do with this quest. But … I also have the feeling it could be dangerous. I’m not sure I want to find out the truth. Is that crazy?”

“No,” Piper said. “Not at all.”

She said something else, but I put a finger on my lips.

Somewhere below, metal clanged against metal, like a door slamming shut. The sound echoed through the warehouse.

I peered over the railing.

“Leo?” I called. No answer. I crouched next to Piper. “I don’t like this.”

“He could be in trouble,” Piper said. “Go check.”

I considered it for a second. “No.”

Piper looked puzzled. “No?”

“We’re not going to split up any more than we already have. That’s the worst strategic decision ever.” That smell again. Cinnamon and sandalwood. Looked like my lost friend was a strategist.

“So what do we do?” whispered Piper. I peered back over the railing. “Leo, if it’s you, make the signal.”

Three taps. I waited. There was only silence.

I turned back to Piper. She tried to sit up. The sound was approaching us, thumping on the metallic stairs. In a split second decision, I slung Piper’s bag over my shoulder, grabbed her bridal-style, and told the winds to hide us in the top corner of the warehouse, deep in the shadows. This time, they didn’t resist, which I was grateful for. I didn’t have enough energy to repeat the back and forth.

There was railing over there, too, I guess for maintenance, just wide enough for a teenager to sit there. We landed, and Piper bit back a yelp.

Piper reached out to her bag. She fumbled through it, and I heard the sound of wrapping. Piper gasped, and I covered her mouth with my hand. I counted ten seconds before letting her go. The warehouse was so silent I could hear the beating of my own heart.

“I took more ambrosia. My ankle doesn’t hurt,” Piper whispered in my ear. Her voice was so quiet, I had trouble hearing it.

I put a hand on her forehead. Her temperature was dangerously high, but cool enough that I could set aside that worry.

The steps on the stairs got louder and louder below us. At the top of the stairs, a face appeared out of the darkness—a hideous black grin, a smashed nose, and a single bloodshot eye in the middle of his forehead.

I held my breath. Monocle Motors meant Cyclopes.

The cyclops wasn’t happy to see that we had fled the railway. He grunted, picking up the roll of duct tape from the floor and throwing it to the floor below. It crashed with a ‘clang!’

The cyclops went back down the stairs, grumbling something. Then he raised his head, as if he’d gotten a marvelous idea.

“Leo!” he called, and I realized with a chill that he was imitating my voice perfectly. “Leo, are you there?”

He stumped to the main floor, calling in my voice. “Leo, make the signal! Leo!”

The sound of the cyclops’ footsteps faded away. When I couldn’t hear them anymore, Piper took out Katoptris and sliced off the duct tape, freeing her foot.

“I’m okay,” she promised. I nodded.

“Hold on to me,” I whispered. “Let’s see what’s going on down there.”

I flew us down to the main floor, staying in the shadows. We landed with a stumble, and Piper caught me. “You okay?”

“Just tired,” I managed. “Sorry I didn’t get to train you,”

Piper smiled. “Oh, I’m dangerous. Anyone gets close to me, I’ll skewer them.”

We worked our way to the center of the room, hiding behind boxes and hollow truck chassis. The entire floor was filled with a strange smell. My brain was kicking itself. I should have recognized it.

Finally we reached the point where the stench was most intense, at the assembly line. We crouched behind an empty truck shell.

Piper and I peeked around it. Hanging directly above the assembly line, suspended by a chain from a crane on the opposite side, was a massive truck engine—just dangling thirty feet up, as if it had been left there when the factory was abandoned. Below it on the conveyor belt sat a truck chassis, and clustered around it were three dark shapes the size of forklifts. Nearby, dangling from chains on two robotic arms, were two smaller shapes—maybe more engines, but one of them was twisting around as if it were alive. Behind the line I could make out another robotic crane, and behind it, the door Leo must have gone through.

Then one of the forklift shapes rose, and I saw that it was one of the cyclopes. “Told you it was nothing,” he rumbled. His voice was deep and feral.

One of the other forklift-sized lumps shifted, and called out in Piper’s voice: “Leo, help me! Help—” Then the voice changed, becoming a masculine snarl. “Bah, there’s nobody out there. No demigod could be that quiet, eh?”

The first monster chuckled. “Probably ran away, if they know what’s good for them. Let’s get cooking.”

Snap. A bright orange light sizzled to life—an emergency flare—and we were temporarily blinded. He ducked behind the crane until the spots cleared from his eyes. Then we took another peep and saw a nightmare scene that made a bolt of electricity course through my veins.

The two smaller things dangling from crane arms weren’t engines. They were deer, tied up above the hooves and held with chains up to the necks. On the conveyor belt, the bed of the unfinished pickup truck was being used as a fire pit. The emergency flare had ignited a mixture of tires and wood, which, from the smell of it, had been doused in kerosene. A big metal pole was suspended over the flames—a spit, I realized, which meant this was a cooking fire.

But most terrifying of all were the cooks. Monocle Motors: that single red eye logo. Why hadn’t I realized before? Three massive humanoids gathered around the fire. Two were standing, stoking the flames. The largest one crouched, almost facing us. I retreated a little behind the truck. If the light hit my face, she would see me.

The two with their back to us were each ten feet tall, with hairy muscular bodies and skin that glowed red in the firelight. One of the monsters wore a chain mail loincloth that looked really uncomfortable. The other wore a ragged fuzzy toga made of fiberglass insulation, which also would not have made my top ten wardrobe ideas.

The third Cyclops was a female. She was probably several feet taller than the other two, and even beefier. She wore a tent of chain mail cut like some sort of sack dress. What’d they call that—a muumuu? Yeah, the Cyclops lady had a chain mail muumuu. Her greasy black hair was matted in pigtails, woven with copper wires and metal washers. Her nose and mouth were thick and smashed together, like she spent her free time ramming her face into walls; but her single red eye glittered with evil intelligence.

Beside me, Piper seemed to be trying to control her breathing. Those things were standing between us and Leo. I put a hand on her shoulder.

Out behind the Cyclops lady, I noticed movement. Leo. A few of his dark locks were visible behind the crane at the other side. He was working on something.

I tapped Piper’s shoulder, and we exchanged a look. She’d seen him, too.

We started moving toward Leo’s position. But it was no luck. One of the smaller cyclopes turned around too fast, and saw Piper.

“Demigod!”

I could see Leo from where I was, concentrated on whatever plan he had. I couldn’t let them see him. Piper shook her head at me. _Don’t get up_. She stood.

The cyclopes didn’t seem all too worried. The one in the mail loincloth looked at cyclops lady. “Can I attack her? I like it when they scream.”

Crouching lady grunted, and Loincloth made to grab at Piper. She crouched. Loincloth grabbed empty air.

I started moving again toward Leo. Piper went back to her original position, Katoptris drawn. She spoke. Her tone was calm and reasonable, like she was correcting a naughty puppy. “Oh, Mr. Cyclops, you don’t want to kill me. It would be much better if you just let me go.”

Loincloth scratched his ugly head. He turned to his friend in the fiberglass toga. “She’s kind of pretty, Torque. Maybe I should let her go.”

Torque, the dude in the toga, growled. “I saw her first, Sump. I’ll let her go!”

Sump and Torque started to argue, but the third Cyclops rose and shouted, “Fools!”

Behind the crane, Leo jolted. I was almost there.

The woman Cyclops stalked over to Sump and pushed him aside, knocking him over the conveyor belt. Torque backed up quickly.

“The girl is Venus spawn,” the lady Cyclops snarled. “She’s using charmspeak on you.”

Piper started to say, “Please, ma’am—”

“Rarr!” The lady Cyclops grabbed Piper by the waist. “Don’t try your pretty talk on me, girl! I’m Ma Gasket! I’ve eaten heroes tougher than you for lunch!”

I feared Piper would get crushed, but Ma Gasket just dropped her on the floor. Torque ran to tie her up. Ma Gasket started yelling at Sump about how stupid he was.

I reached Leo. His eyes widened, and I put a finger on my lips. Leo looked back at Piper, and seemed to understand. He showed me what he had in his hands: a sort of small remote, that he was attaching to the robotic crane.

Leo’s hands worked furiously. He twisted wires and turned switches, almost on pilot mode. He finished attaching the remote. Then he nodded at me, and crept over to the next robotic arm while the Cyclopes were talking. I stayed behind, coin at the ready.

“—eat her last, Ma?” Sump was saying. “Idiot!” Ma Gasket yelled, and I realized Sump and Torque must be her sons. If so, ugly definitely ran in the family. “I should’ve thrown you out on the streets when you were babies, like proper Cyclops children. You might have learned some useful skills. Curse my soft heart that I kept you!”

“Soft heart?” Torque muttered.

“What was that, you ingrate?”

“Nothing, Ma. I said you got a soft heart. We get to work for you, feed you, file your toenails—”

“And you should be grateful!” Ma Gasket bellowed. “Now, stoke the fire, Torque! And Sump, you idiot, my case of salsa is in the other warehouse. Don’t tell me you expect me to eat this demigod without salsa!”

“Yes, Ma,” Sump said. “I mean no, Ma. I mean—”

“Go get it!” Ma Gasket picked up a nearby truck chassis and slammed it over Sump’s head. Sump crumpled to his knees. I was sure a hit like that would kill him, but Sump apparently got hit by trucks a lot. He managed to push the chassis off his head. Then he staggered to his feet and ran off to fetch the salsa.

Leo flashed me a thumbs up. He had finished wiring the second machine, and moved toward a third.

As he dashed between robotic arms, the Cyclopes didn’t see him, but Piper did. Her expression turned from terror to disbelief, and she gasped. Ma Gasket turned to her. “What’s the matter, girl? So fragile I broke you?”

Thankfully, Piper was a quick thinker. She looked away from Leo and said, “I think it’s my ribs, ma’am. If I’m busted up inside, I’ll taste terrible.”

Ma Gasket bellowed with laughter. “Good one. The last hero we ate—remember him, Torque? Son of Mercury, wasn’t he?”

Mercury. I bit my tongue so hard that I started bleeding. Mercury was Hermes’ Roman name.

“Yes, Ma,” Torque said. “Tasty. Little bit stringy.” “He tried a trick like that. Said he was on medication. But he tasted fine!”

“Tasted like mutton,” Torque recalled. “Purple shirt. Talked in Latin. Yes, a bit stringy, but good.”

I froze. I hoped we wouldn’t have to fight too soon, because my head seemed about to explode. They had found a demigod like me.

Piper asked, “Purple shirt? Latin?” She sounded dumbstruck.

“Good eating,” Ma Gasket said fondly. “Point is, girl, we’re not as dumb as people think! We’re not falling for those stupid tricks and riddles, not us northern Cyclopes.”

I saw Leo crouch back behind the third crane. He seemed frantic.

Piper kept talking, laying on the praise. “Oh, I’ve heard about the northern Cyclopes!” Which I figured was a lie, but she sounded convincing. “I never knew you were so big and clever!”

“Flattery won’t work either,” Ma Gasket said, though she sounded pleased. “It’s true, you’ll be breakfast for the best Cyclopes around.”

“But aren’t Cyclopes good?” Piper asked. “I thought you made weapons for the gods.”

“Bah! I’m very good. Good at eating people. Good at smashing. And good at building things, yes, but not for the gods. Our cousins, the elder Cyclopes, they do this, yes. Thinking they’re so high and mighty ’cause they’re a few thousand years older. Then there’s our southern cousins, living on islands and tending sheep. Morons! But we Hyperborean Cyclopes, the northern clan, we’re the best! Founded Monocle Motors in this old factory—the best weapons, armor, chariots, fuel-efficient SUVs! And yet—bah! Forced to shut down. Laid off most of our tribe. The war was too quick. Titans lost. No good! No more need for Cyclops weapons.”

“Oh, no,” Piper sympathized. “I’m sure you made some amazing weapons.”

Torque grinned. “Squeaky war hammer!”

He picked up a large pole with an accordion-looking metal box on the end. He slammed it against the floor and the cement cracked, but there was also a sound like the world’s largest rubber ducky getting stomped.

“Terrifying,” Piper said. Torque looked pleased. “Not as good as the exploding ax, but this one can be used more than once.”

“Can I see it?” Piper asked. “If you could just free my hands—”

Torque stepped forward eagerly, but Ma Gasket said, “Stupid! She’s tricking you again. Enough talk!”

“Hey, wait,” Piper said, trying to get the Cyclopes’ attention. “Hey, can I just ask—”

There was a spark behind the third crane. The Cyclopes froze and turned in its direction. Then Torque picked up a truck and threw it at Leo. I jumped up and summoned my spear.

“Hey, I’m here too!”

Leo rolled as the truck steamrolled over the machinery. If he’d been a half-second slower, he would’ve been smashed. He got to his feet, and Ma Gasket spotted him. She yelled, “Torque, you pathetic excuse for a Cyclops, get him!”

Torque barreled toward Leo. He frantically gunned the toggle on his makeshift remote. Ma Gasket turned at me. She threw an engine at me, and I called the wind. The engine stopped midway and went back at her with enough force to kill her, but she avoided it. Behind her, Piper stood up, getting herself away from the scene.

The first robotic arm whirred to life. A three-ton yellow metal claw slammed Torque in the back so hard, he landed flat on his face. Before he could recover, the robotic hand grabbed him by one leg and hurled him straight up.

“AHHHHH!” Torque rocketed into the gloom. Ma turned to look.

The ceiling was too dark and too high up to see exactly what happened, but judging from the harsh metal clang, I guessed the Cyclops had hit one of the support girders. Torque never came down. Instead, yellow dust rained to the floor.

Torque had disintegrated. Ma Gasket stared at Leo in shock. “My son … You … You …”

As if on cue, Sump lumbered into the firelight with a case of salsa. “Ma, I got the extra-spicy—”

He never finished his sentence. I threw my spear. The salsa case exploded like a piñata and Sump fell backward. He may have been immune to getting hit with truck chasses, but he wasn’t immune to golden pointy things. He dissolved in a mountain of dust.

Two Cyclopes down. I ran toward him, avoiding another truck narrowly. I was running solely on adrenaline. If I had to fly again, or summon lightning, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it.

Ma Gasket locked her eye on Leo. She grabbed the nearest crane arm and ripped it off its pedestal with a savage roar. “You busted my boys! Only I get to bust my boys!”

Leo punched a button, and the two remaining arms swung into action. Ma Gasket caught the first one and tore it in half. The second arm smacked her in the head, but that only seemed to make her mad. She grabbed it by the clamps, ripped it free, and swung it like a baseball bat. It missed Piper by an inch.

Then Ma Gasket let it go—spinning it toward Leo. He yelped and rolled to one side as it demolished the machine next to him. She stood about twenty feet from him now, next to the cooking fire. Her fists were clenched, her teeth bared. She looked ridiculous in her chain mail muumuu and her greasy pigtails—but given the murderous glare in her huge red eye and the fact that she was twelve feet tall, I wasn’t laughing.

“Any more tricks, demigod?” Ma Gasket demanded. Leo glanced up.

I called the wind, and knocked Ma Gasket off her feet. I was too tired, though, and I didn’t get her far: she fell on top of the remains of Torque, and struggled to get up.

Leo looked at me, frantic. “Jason, the chain-”

The chain? What chain? There were too many of them to know.

Ma Gasket stood. Her eyes were ablaze.

“Heck, yeah, I got tricks!” Leo raised his remote control. “Take one more step, and I’ll destroy you with fire!”

He kept looking at me, and then looking up. What did he want me to see?

Ma Gasket laughed. “Would you? Cyclopes are immune to fire, you idiot. But if you wish to play with flames, let me help!”

Leo gave me a look. _I got this. Just get the dam chain._

Ma Gasket scooped red-hot coals into her bare hands and flung them at Leo. They landed all around his feet.

“You missed,” he said incredulously.

Then Ma Gasket grinned and picked up a barrel next to the truck. I just had time to read the stenciled word on the side—kerosene —before Ma Gasket threw it. The barrel split on the floor in front of Leo, spilling lighter fluid everywhere. Coals sparked.

Leo closed his eyes, and Piper screamed, “No!”

A firestorm erupted around Leo. He submerged in flames, swirling twenty feet into the air. I flied up, avoiding the heat. My brain protested, but I ignored it.

There was a chain supporting an engine, almost on top of where Ma Gasket was standing. Maybe if we threw it on her head… Yeah, that could work. The problem was a piece of railing stood in the middle. I got closer to it. It had hinges. Maybe if I could move it, Leo could be able to do something.

Ma Gasket shrieked with delight, but Leo didn’t offer the fire any good fuel. The kerosene burned off, dying down to small fiery patches on the floor. Leo looked up again, and I saw what he meant.

Below me, right in the middle of the chain, there was one ring that was about to break. I knew what to do. I concentrated on the railway, willing the wind to move it. I could feel my own strength depleting, but the hinges creaked in a straight angle, freeing the way.

Piper gasped. “Leo?”

Ma Gasket looked astonished. “You live?”

Then she took that extra step forward, which put her right where Leo wanted.

“What are you?”

“The son of Hephaestus,” Leo said. “And I warned you I’d destroy you with fire.”

Leo pointed one finger in the air. He shot a bolt of white-hot flames at the chain suspending the engine block above the Cyclops’s head—aiming for the link that looked weaker than rest.

The flames died. Nothing happened. Ma Gasket laughed. “An impressive try, son of Hephaestus. It’s been many centuries since I saw a fire user. You’ll make a spicy appetizer!”

The chain snapped—that single link heated beyond its tolerance point—and the engine block fell, deadly and silent.

“I don’t think so,” Leo said. Lightning cracked outside.

Ma Gasket didn’t even have time to look up. Smash! No more Cyclops—just a pile of dust under a five-ton engine block.

“Not immune to engines, huh?” Leo said. “Boo-yah!”

Then he fell to his knees, and I pretty much dropped next to him. My head buzzed.

“Dude, are you all right?” I asked. “Can you move?” He didn’t seem to hear me.

I helped him get up, and together we freed Piper. She got nectar out from her bag, and forced us to drink it. It tasted like hot chocolate.

Piper looked at Leo with something like fear. “How did you—the fire—have you always …?”

Leo looked down. “Always,” he said. “I’m a freaking menace. Sorry, I should’ve told you guys sooner but—”

“Sorry?” Piper punched his arm. She was grinning. “That was amazing, Valdez! You saved our lives. What are you sorry about?”

Leo blinked. I smiled at him.

“You were awesome, Leo,” I said. “Melting that ring from the ground- It was really cool.”

Leo started to smile, and then his face fell. I followed his eyes to the floor, next to Piper’s foot.

Yellow dust—the powdered remains of one of the Cyclopes, maybe Torque—was shifting across the floor like an invisible wind was pushing it back together.

“They’re forming again,” I said.

Piper stepped away from the dust. “That’s not possible. Annabeth told me monsters dissipate when they’re killed. They go back to Tartarus and can’t return for a long time.”

“Well, nobody told the dust that,” said Leo.

We watched as it collected into a pile, then very slowly spread out, forming a shape with arms and legs.

“Oh, god.” Piper turned pale. “Boreas said something about this—the earth yielding up horrors. _When monsters no longer stay in Tartarus, and souls are no longer confined to Hades._ How long do you think we have?”

“I don’t know,” Leo said. “But we need to get out of here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, more canon divergence on this one. Jason is telling the story, so I can't have him unconscious while Leo saves the day, right? I hope I kept as much of the "epic Leo" factor as possible.  
> Thanks for reading this much!


	10. Chicago

I fell asleep the second I lay back down on Festus’ back, despite the hard metal and the harness holding me in place. I was so tired, everything hurt—my arms, my legs, my chest, my head. Especially the head. It felt like an overinflated water balloon.

“If I’m dead,” I murmured, “why does it hurt so much?”

“You’re not dead, my hero,” said a woman’s voice. “It is not your time. Come, speak with me.”

I found myself standing in an earthen cage. Tendrils of tree roots and stone whirled together, confining me. Outside the bars, I could see the floor of a dry reflecting pool, another earthen spire growing at the far end, and above them, the ruined red stones of a burned-out house.

Next to me in the cage, a woman sat cross-legged in black robes, her head covered by a shroud. She pushed aside her veil, revealing a face that was proud and beautiful—but also hardened with suffering.

“Juno,” I said.

“Welcome to my prison,” said the goddess. “You will not die today, Jason. You and your friends have seen through—for now.”

“For now?” I asked.

Juno gestured at the tendrils of her cage. “There are worse trials to come. The very earth stirs against us.”

“You’re a goddess,” I said. “Why can’t you just escape?”

Juno smiled sadly. Her form began to glow, until her brilliance filled the cage with painful light. The air hummed with power, molecules splitting apart like a nuclear explosion. I suspected if I were actually there in the flesh, I would’ve been vaporized.

The cage should’ve been blasted to rubble. The ground should’ve split and the ruined house should’ve been leveled. But when the glow died, the cage hadn’t budged. Nothing outside the bars had changed. Only Juno looked different—a little more stooped and tired.

“Some powers are even greater than the gods,” she said. “I am not easily contained. I can be in many places at once. But when the greater part of my essence is caught, it is like a foot in a bear trap, you might say. I can’t escape, and I am concealed from the eyes of the other gods. Only you can find me, and I grow weaker by the day.”

“Then why did you come here?” I asked. “How were you caught?”

The goddess sighed. “I could not stay idle. Your father Jupiter believes he can withdraw from the world, and thus lull our enemies back to sleep. He believes we Olympians have become too involved in the affairs of mortals, in the fates of our demigod children, especially since we agreed to claim them all after the war. He believes this is what has caused our enemies to stir. That is why he closed Olympus.”

“But you don’t agree.”

“No,” she said. “Often I do not understand my husband’s moods or his decisions, but even for Zeus, this seemed paranoid. I cannot fathom why he was so insistent and so convinced. It was … unlike him. As Hera, I might have been content to follow my lord’s wishes. But I am also Juno.”

Her image flickered, and a suit of armor covered her simple black robes, a goatskin cloak—the symbol of a Roman warrior—across her bronze mantle.

“Juno Moneta they once called me—Juno, the One Who Warns. I was guardian of the state, patron of Eternal Rome. I could not sit by while the descendants of my people were attacked. I sensed danger at this sacred spot. A voice—” She hesitated. “A voice told me I should come here. Gods do not have what you might call a conscience, nor do we have dreams; but the voice was like that—soft and persistent, warning me to come here. And so the same day Zeus closed Olympus, I slipped away without telling him my plans, so he could not stop me. And I came here to investigate.”

“It was a trap,” I guessed. The goddess nodded.

“Only too late did I realize how quickly the earth was stirring. I was even more foolish than Jupiter—a slave to my own impulses. This is exactly how it happened the first time. I was taken captive by the giants, and my imprisonment started a war. Now our enemies rise again. The gods can only defeat them with the help of the greatest living heroes. And the one whom the giants serve …she cannot be defeated at all —only kept asleep.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will soon,” Juno said.

The cage began to constrict, the tendrils spiraling tighter. Hera’s form shivered like a candle flame in the breeze. Outside the cage, I could see shapes gathering at the edge of the pool—lumbering humanoids with hunched backs and bald heads. Unless my eyes were tricking him—they had more than one set of arms. He heard wolves too, but not the wolves I’d seen with Lupa. I could tell from their howls this was a different pack —hungrier, more aggressive, out for blood.

“Hurry, Jason,” Juno said. “My keepers approach, and you begin to wake. I will not be strong enough to appear to you again, even in dreams.”

“Wait,” I said. “Boreas told us you’d made a dangerous gamble. What did he mean?”

Juno’s eyes looked wild, and I wondered if she really had done something crazy.

“An exchange,” she said. “The only way to bring peace. The enemy counts on our divisions, and if we are divided, we will be destroyed. You are my peace offering, Jason—a bridge to overcome millennia of hatred.”

“What? I don’t—”

“I cannot tell you more,” Juno said. “You have only lived this long because I have taken your memory. Find this place. Return to your starting point. Your sister will help.”

“Thalia?”

The scene began to dissolve. “Good-bye, Jason. Beware Chicago. Your most dangerous mortal enemy waits there. If you are to die, it will be by her hand.”

“Who?” I demanded.

But Hera’s image faded, and I awoke.

We were flying peacefully through the winter sky. Leo drove. He and Piper talked in low voices.

“…isn’t that a planet?” Leo was saying.

“It’s also the Roman name for Hermes,” answered Piper. “More Roman things. And he spoke Latin.”

I sat up, trying to stretch out my muscles. “Is this about the other kids the cyclopes claimed to have eaten?”

My friends nodded. Piper had half turned to see me, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Leo glanced back for a second.

A son of Mercury… I thought of the memory I’d recovered while we were at the factory. Cinnamon and sandalwood. This Mercury kid didn’t fit it, but it was making my head feel like it was about to explode. I was going to need some painkillers if nectar and ambrosia couldn’t make it go away.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. My brain was scrambling for information, yelling frustrated. I should have known who that kid was. I had known his name. And it was gone.

Hold on. I had known that kid. It may not be a huge clue, but it was something.

“I’m not alone,” I realized out loud. “There are others like me.”

“Jason,” Piper said, “you were never alone. You’ve got us.”

I wanted to kick myself. “I—I know. It’s just – I’m so different from everyone at Camp Half-Blood, and…”

_You are my peace offering, Jason—a bridge to overcome millennia of hatred._

That was it. The first piece of the puzzle.

“I dreamed about Juno,” I said. “She said something…”

I told them what I’d seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage.

“An exchange?” Piper asked. “What does that mean?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. But Hera’s gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—”

“Or save us,” Piper said hopefully. “That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about.”

Leo cleared his throat. “About that … she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard that right. “Did you say … Porta-Potty?”

Leo told us that he’d seen her face in the factory yard.

“I don’t know if she’s completely unkillable,” he said, “but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like, ‘Pfft, right, I’m gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge.’”

“She’s trying to divide us.” Piper said. I could sense her tension without even seeing her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I just … Why are they toying with us? Who is this lady, and how is she connected to Enceladus?”

“Enceladus?” For once, I didn’t think I’d heard that name before.

“I mean …” Piper’s voice quavered. “That’s one of the giants. Just one of the names I could remember.”

I got the feeling there was a lot more bothering her, but I decided he not to press her. She’d had a rough morning.

Leo scratched his head. “Well, I dunno about Enchiladas—”

“Enceladus,” Piper corrected.

“Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?”

“Porphyrion?” Piper asked. “He was the giant king, I think.”

I envisioned that dark spire in the old reflecting pool—growing larger as Hera got weaker.

“I’m going to take wild guess,” I said. “In the old stories, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera. That was the first shot in the war between the giants and the gods.”

“I think so,” Piper agreed. “But those myths are really garbled and conflicted. It’s almost like nobody wanted that story to survive. I just remember there was a war, and the giants were almost impossible to kill.”

“Heroes and gods had to work together,” I said. “That’s what Hera told me.”

“Kind of hard to do,” Leo grumbled, “if the gods won’t even talk to us.”

I decided not to comment on that. I had the feeling that the gods never talked to their children all that much. Even with my memories missing, I knew that if I looked into the drawer labeled ‘Times I talked to my dad’, it would be empty. If it even existed at all.

We flew west. My head kept pounding, so I went back to the two memories I had so far. Thalia, and my faceless friend. Two memories in two days. Was it really going to take me that long to remember who I was?

I wasn’t sure how much time passed before the dragon dove through a break in the clouds, and below us, glittering in the winter sun, was a city at the edge of a massive lake. A crescent of skyscrapers lined the shore. Behind us, stretching out to the western horizon, was a vast grid of snow-covered neighborhoods and roads.

“Chicago,” I said. According to my dear patron, my worst mortal enemy would be waiting here. If I was going to die, it would be by her hand.

“One problem down,” Leo said. “We got here alive. Now, how do we find the storm spirits?”

I saw a flash of movement below us. At first, I thought it was a small plane, but it was too small, too dark and fast. The thing spiraled toward the skyscrapers, weaving and changing shape—and, just for a moment it became the smoky figure of a horse.

“How about we follow that one,” I suggested, “and see where it goes?”

Festus caught speed, but I feared for a moment that we’d lose our target. The ventus moved like … well, like the wind.

“Speed up!” I urged.

“Bro,” Leo said, “if I get any closer, he’ll spot us. Bronze dragon ain’t exactly a stealth plane.”

“Slow down!” Piper yelped.

The ventus dove into the grid of downtown streets. Festus tried to follow, but his wingspan was way too wide. His left wing clipped the edge of a building, slicing off a stone gargoyle before Leo pulled up.

“Get above the buildings,” I suggested. “We’ll track him from there.”

“You want to drive this thing?” Leo grumbled, but he did what I asked.

After a few minutes, I spotted it again, zipping through the streets with no apparent purpose—blowing over pedestrians, ruffling flags, making cars swerve.

“Oh great,” Piper said. “There’re two.”

She was right. A second ventus blasted around the corner of the Renaissance Hotel and linked up with the first. They wove together in a chaotic dance, shooting to the top of a skyscraper, bending a radio tower, and diving back down toward the street.

“Those guys do not need any more caffeine,” Leo said.

“I guess Chicago’s a good place to hang out,” Piper said. “Nobody’s going to question a couple more evil winds.”

“More than a couple,” I said. “Look.”

The dragon circled over a wide avenue next to a lake-side park. Storm spirits were converging—at least a dozen of them, whirling around a big public art installation.

“Which one do you think is Dylan?” Leo asked. “I wanna throw something at him.”

I focused on the art installation. The closer we got to it, the faster my heart beat. It was just a public fountain, but it was unpleasantly familiar. Two five-story monoliths rose from either end of a long granite reflecting pool. The monoliths seemed to be built of video screens, flashing the combined image of a giant face that spewed water into the pool. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it looked like a high-tech, super-size version of that ruined reflecting pool I’d seen in my dreams, with those two dark masses jutting from either end.

As I watched, the image on the screens changed to a woman’s face with her eyes closed.

“Leo …” I said nervously.

“I see her,” Leo said. “I don’t like her, but I see her.”

Then the screens went dark. The venti swirled together into a single funnel cloud and skittered across the fountain, kicking up a waterspout almost as high as the monoliths. They got to its center, popped off a drain cover, and disappeared underground.

“Did they just go down a drain?” Piper asked. “How are we supposed to follow them?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Leo said. “That fountain thing is giving me seriously bad vibes. And aren’t we supposed to, like, beware the earth?”

I felt the same way, but we had to follow. It was our only way forward. We had to find Juno, and we had only two days until the solstice.

“Put us down in that park,” I suggested. “We’ll check it out on foot.”

Festus landed in an open area between the lake and the skyline. The signs said Grant Park, and I imagined it would’ve been a nice place in the summer; but now it was a field of ice, snow, and salted walkways. The dragon’s hot metal feet hissed as we touched down. Festus flapped his wings unhappily and shot fire into the sky, but there was no one around to notice. The wind coming off the lake was bitter cold. Anyone with sense would be inside. My eyes stung so badly, I could barely see.

We dismounted, and Festus the dragon stomped his feet. One of his ruby eyes flickered, so it looked like he was blinking.

“Is that normal?” I asked.

Leo pulled a rubber mallet from his tool bag. He whacked the dragon’s bad eye, and the light went back to normal.

“Yes,” Leo said. “Festus can’t hang around here, though, in the middle of the park. They’ll arrest him for loitering. Maybe if I had a dog whistle …”

He rummaged in his tool belt, but came up with nothing.

“Too specialized?” he guessed. “Okay, give me a safety whistle. They got that in lots of machine shops.”

This time, Leo pulled out a big plastic orange whistle.

“Coach Hedge would be jealous! Okay, Festus, listen.”

Leo blew the whistle. The shrill sound probably rolled all the way across Lake Michigan.

“You hear that, come find me, okay? Until then, you fly wherever you want. Just try not to barbecue any pedestrians.”

The dragon snorted—hopefully in agreement. Then he spread his wings and launched into the air.

Piper took one step and winced. “Ah!”

“Your ankle?” I’d forgotten about her injury back in the Cyclops factory. “That nectar we gave you might be wearing off.”

“It’s fine.” She shivered, and I thought that she needed something a little better than the jacket Aphrodite had given her. I hoped we lived long enough to find her one.

She took a few more steps with only a slight limp, but I could tell she was trying not to grimace.

“Let’s get out of the wind,” I suggested.

“Down a drain?” Piper shuddered. “Sounds cozy.”

We wrapped ourselves up as best as we could and headed toward the fountain.

According to the plaque, it was called Crown Fountain. All the water had emptied out except for a few patches that were starting to freeze. It didn’t seem right that the fountain would have water in it in the winter anyway.

Then again, those big monitors had flashed the face of Dirt Woman. Nothing about this place was right.

We stepped to the center of the pool. No spirits tried to stop us. The giant monitor walls stayed dark. The drain hole was easily big enough for a person, and a maintenance ladder led down into the gloom.

I went first. As I climbed, I braced myself for horrible sewer smells, but it wasn’t that bad. The ladder dropped into a brickwork tunnel running north to south. The air was warm and dry, with only a trickle of water on the floor.

Piper and Leo climbed down after him.

“Are all sewers this nice?” Piper wondered.

“No,” Leo said. “Trust me.”

I frowned. “How do you know—”

“Hey, man, I ran away six times. I’ve slept in some weird places, okay? Now, which way do we go?”

I listened to the echoes in the tunnels.

“That way,” I said. “There’s a draft blowing south. Maybe the venti went with the flow.”

It wasn’t much of a lead, but nobody offered anything better.

Unfortunately, as soon as we started walking, Piper stumbled. I caught her and helped her sit on a brick ledge.

“Stupid ankle,” she cursed.

“Let’s rest,” I decided. “We could all use it. We’ve been going nonstop for over a day. Leo, can you pull any food from that tool belt besides breath mints?”

“Thought you’d never ask. Chef Leo is on it!”

I sat next to Piper while Leo shuffled through his pack.

I was glad to rest. I was still tired and dizzy despite my nap on Festus, and hungry, too. But mostly, I wasn’t eager to face whatever lay ahead. I turned the gold coin in my fingers. I wondered if a weapon as good as this one had had a name. Maybe one day, I’d get to remember it.

_If you are to die_ , Juno had warned, _it will be by her hand_. Whoever “her” was. After Juno, Khione, the Cyclops mother, and the weird sleeping lady, the last thing I needed was another psycho woman in my life.

A few feet away from us, Leo lit a small cooking fire. He hummed as he pulled supplies out of his pack and his tool belt. In the firelight, Piper’s eyes seemed to dance. She looked sad, and I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t keep giving her passes if I wanted to help.

“Back in the factory,” I said, “you were you going to say something about your dad.”

Piper traced her finger over the bricks, almost like she was writing out a scream she didn’t want to vocalize. “Was I?”

“Piper,” I said, “he’s in some kind of trouble, isn’t it?”

Over at the fire, Leo stirred some sizzling bell peppers and meat in a pan. “Yeah, baby! Almost there.”

Piper looked on the verge of tears. “Jason … I can’t talk about it.”

“We’re your friends. Let us help.”

That seemed to make her feel worse. She took a shaky breath. “I wish I could, but-”

“And bingo!” Leo announced. He came over with three plates stacked on his arms like a waiter. I had no idea where he’d gotten all the food, or how he’d put it together so fast, but it looked amazing: pepper and beef tacos with chips and salsa.

“Leo,” Piper said in amazement. “How did you—?”

“Chef Leo’s Taco Garage is fixing you up!” he said proudly. “And by the way, it’s tofu, not beef, beauty queen, so don’t freak. Just dig in!”

I wasn’t sure about tofu, but the tacos tasted as good as they smelled. Piper yawned, leaned against Leo’s shoulder and closed her eyes. In two seconds she was asleep. She looked like a cat. I meet Leo’s eyes, and we tried not to laugh.

Leo had really thought of everything. Even lemonade, made from canteen water and powdered mix.

“You should start a stand,” I told him. “Make some serious coin.”

Leo grinned. I stared at the fire.

“Leo … about this fire stuff you can do … I have to tell you something.”

I told him about my dream of him in the forest, two nights ago. Leo’s smile faltered.

“So you knew I could make fire.”

“Yeah. I have to say, the way you found Festus, it was really cool.”

“I guess.” Leo didn’t meet my eyes. He shuffled under Piper’s weight.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked. For once, Leo was perfectly still.

“Didn’t want to look like a freak.”

“I have lightning and wind powers,” I reminded him. “Piper can turn beautiful and charm people into giving her BMWs. You’re no more a freak than we are. And, hey, maybe you can fly, too. Like jump off a building and yell, ‘Flame on!’”

Leo snorted.

“If I did that, you would see a flaming kid falling to his death, and I would be yelling something a little stronger than ‘Flame on!’ Trust me, Hephaestus cabin doesn’t see fire powers as cool. Nyssa told me they’re super rare. When a demigod like me comes around, bad things happen. Really bad.”

“Maybe it’s the other way around,” I suggested. “Maybe people with special gifts show up when bad things are happening because that’s when they’re needed most.”

Leo cleared away the plates. “Maybe. But I’m telling you … it’s not always a gift.”

Despite the fire, I was cold. “You’re talking about your mom, aren’t you? The night she died.”

Leo didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The fact that he was quiet, not joking around—that told me enough.

“Leo, her death wasn’t your fault. Whatever happened that night—it wasn’t because you could summon fire. This Dirt Woman, whoever she is, has been trying to ruin you for years, mess up your confidence, take away everything you care about. She’s trying to make you feel like a failure. You’re not. You’re important.”

“That’s what she said.” Leo looked up, his eyes full of pain. “She said I was meant to do something important—something that would make or break that big prophecy about the seven demigods. That’s what scares me. I don’t know if I’m up to it.”

I wanted to tell him everything would be all right, but it would’ve sounded fake. I didn’t know what would happen. We were demigods, which meant sometimes things didn’t end okay. Sometimes you got eaten by the Cyclops.

If you asked most kids, “Hey, you want to summon fire or lightning or magical makeup?” they’d think it sounded pretty cool. But those powers went along with hard stuff, like sitting in a sewer in the middle of winter, running from monsters, losing your memory, watching your friends almost get cooked, and having dreams that warned you of your own death.

Leo poked at the remnants of his fire, turning over red-hot coals with his bare hand. “You ever wonder about the other four demigods? I mean … if we’re three of the ones from the Great Prophecy, who are the others? Where are they?”

I had thought about it, all right, but tried to push it out of my mind. I had a horrible suspicion that I would be expected to lead those other demigods at least partly, and I was afraid I would fail.

_You’ll tear each other apart_ , Boreas had promised.

I had been trained never to show fear. I know, I know. It’s messed up. But I was sure of that, ever since I saw Lupa. I was supposed to act confident, even if I didn’t feel it. I had no idea how to keep going in this sewer, much less against the giants.

“I don’t know,” I said at last. “I guess the other four will show up when the time is right. Who knows? Maybe they’re on some other quest right now.”

Leo grunted. “I bet their sewer is nicer than ours.”

The draft picked up, blowing toward the south end of the tunnel.

“Get some rest, Leo,” I said. “I’ll take first watch.”

It was hard to measure time, but I figured Leo and Piper slept about four hours. I didn’t mind. Now that I was resting, I didn’t really feel the need for more sleep.

Instead, I thought of the other four demigods. Maybe Percy Jackson’s disappearance had something to do with all this? Why had he disappeared at the same time as me? Where had Juno taken him?

An exchange. Percy Jackson had vanished just as I had arrived. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe that was it. But if Juno had taken Annabeth’s boyfriend to wherever I came from, how were we supposed to find him? And who would he find there? Friends?

If only for Annabeth, I hoped so.

Finally, I woke up Piper and Leo, and we picked up the trace. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the end—a dungeon, a mad scientist’s lab, or maybe a sewer reservoir where all Porta-Potty sludge ends up, forming an evil toilet face large enough to swallow the world.

Instead, we found polished steel elevator doors, each one engraved with a cursive letter M. Next to the elevator was a directory, like for a department store.

“M for Macy’s?” Piper guessed. “I think they have one in downtown Chicago.”

“Or Monocle Motors still?” Leo said. “Guys, read the directory. It’s messed up.”

_Parking, Kennels, Main Entrance: Sewer Level_

_Furnishings and Café M: 1_

_Women’s Fashion and Magical Appliances: 2_

_Men’s Wear and Weaponry: 3_

_Cosmetics, Potions, Poisons & Sundries: 4_

“Kennels for what?” Piper said. “And what kind of department store has its entrance in a sewer?”

“Or sells poisons,” Leo said. “Man, what does ‘sundries’ even mean? Is that like underwear?”

I took a deep breath. “When in doubt, start at the top.”

The doors slid open on the fourth floor, and the scent of perfume wafted into the elevator. I stepped out first, sword ready.

“Guys,” I said. “You’ve got to see this.”

Piper joined me and caught her breath. “This is not Macy’s.”

The department store looked like the inside of a kaleidoscope. The entire ceiling was a stained glass mosaic with astrological signs around a giant sun. The daylight streaming through it washed everything in a thousand different colors. The upper floors made a ring of balconies around a huge central atrium, so we could see all the way down to the ground floor. Gold railings glittered so brightly, they were hard to look at.

Aside from the stained glass ceiling and the elevator, I couldn’t see any other windows or doors, but two sets of glass escalators ran between the levels. The carpeting was a riot of oriental patterns and colors, and the racks of merchandise were just as bizarre.

There was too much to take it at once, but I saw normal stuff like shirt racks and shoe trees mixed in with armored manikins, beds of nails, and fur coats that seemed to be moving.

Leo stepped to the railing and looked down. “Check it out.”

In the middle of the atrium a fountain sprayed water twenty feet into the air, changing color from red to yellow to blue. The pool glittered with gold coins, and on either side of the fountain stood a gilded cage—like an oversize canary cage.

Inside one, a miniature hurricane swirled, and lightning flashed. Somebody had imprisoned the storm spirits, and the cage shuddered as they tried to get out. In the other, frozen like a statue, was a short, buff satyr, holding a tree-branch club.

“Coach Hedge!” Piper said. “We’ve got to get down there.”

A voice said, “May I help you find something?”

All three of us jumped back.

A woman had just appeared in front of us. She wore an elegant black dress with diamond jewelry, and she looked like a retired fashion model —maybe fifty years old, though it was hard for me to judge. Her long dark hair swept over one shoulder, and her face was gorgeous in that surreal super-model way—thin and haughty and cold, not quite human. With their long red-painted nails, her fingers looked more like talons.

She smiled. “I’m so happy to see new customers. How may I help you?”

Leo glanced at me like, _All yours_.

“Um,” I started, “is this your store?”

The woman nodded. “I found it abandoned, you know. I understand so many stores are, these days. I decided it would make the perfect place. I love collecting tasteful objects, helping people, and offering quality goods at a reasonable price. So this seemed a good … how do you say … first acquisition in this country.”

She spoke with a pleasing accent, but I couldn’t guess where from. Clearly she wasn’t hostile, though. I started to relax. Her voice was rich and exotic. I wanted to hear more.

“So you’re new to America?” I asked.

“I am … new,” the woman agreed. “I am the Princess of Colchis. My friends call me Your Highness. Now, what are you looking for?”

I had heard of rich foreigners buying American department stores. Of course most of the time they didn’t sell poisons, living fur coats, storm spirits, or satyrs, but still—with a nice voice like that, the Princess of Colchis couldn’t be all bad.

Piper poked me in the ribs. “Jason …”

“Um, right. Actually, Your Highness …” I pointed to the gilded cage on the first floor. “That’s our friend down there, Gleeson Hedge. The satyr. Could we … have him back, please?”

“Of course!” the princess agreed immediately. “I would love to show you my inventory. First, may I know your names?”

I hesitated. It seemed like a bad idea to give out our names. A memory tugged at the back of my mind—something Juno had warned me about, but it seemed fuzzy.

On the other hand, Her Highness was on the verge of cooperating. If we could get what we wanted without a fight, that would be better. Besides, this lady didn’t seem like an enemy.

Piper started to say, “Jason, I wouldn’t—”

“This is Piper,” I said. “This is Leo. I’m Jason.”

The princess fixed her eyes on me and, just for a moment, her face literally glowed, blazing with so much anger, I could see her skull beneath her skin. My mind was getting blurrier, but I knew something didn’t seem right.

Then the moment passed, and Her Highness looked like a normal elegant woman again, with a cordial smile and a soothing voice.

“Jason. What an interesting name,” she said, her eyes as cold as the Chicago wind. “I think we’ll have to make a special deal for you. Come, children. Let’s go shopping.”


	11. I get rid of my shopping addiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! It's finals month, so I can't always post on time. But anyways, here's another chapter!

The princess gestured toward the cosmetics counter. “Shall we start with the potions?”

“Cool,” I said.

“Guys,” Piper interrupted, “we’re here to get the storm spirits and Coach Hedge. If this—princess—is really our friend—”

“Oh, I’m better than a friend, my dear,” Her Highness said. “I’m a saleswoman.” Her diamonds sparkled, and her eyes glittered. “Don’t worry. We’ll work our way down to the first floor, eh?”

Leo nodded eagerly. “Sure, yeah! That sounds okay. Right, Piper?”

Piper glared at him, but I didn’t understand why. The princess wasn’t a threat.

“Of course it’s okay.” Her Highness put a hand on my shoulder and guided me and Leo toward the cosmetics. “Come along, boys.”

Piper followed along, scowling. Maybe I should ask what was wrong?

But I was sure it was okay. I guess Piper just didn’t like department stores, or perhaps she was still tired. I could ask later, when we’d seen everything here, and had gotten Coach Hedge with us.

We stopped at a counter.

“And here,” the princess said, “is the finest assortment of magical mixtures anywhere.”

The counter was crammed with bubbling beakers and smoking vials on tripods. Lining the display shelves were crystal flasks—some shaped like swans or honey bear dispensers. The liquids inside were every color, from glowing white to polka-dotted. And the smells—wow! Some were pleasant, like fresh-baked cookies or roses, but they were mixed with the scents of burning tires, skunk spray, and gym lockers.

The princess pointed to a bloodred vial—a simple test tube with a cork stopper. “This one will heal any disease.”

“Even cancer?” Leo asked. “Leprosy? Hangnails?”

“Any disease, sweet boy. And this vial”—she pointed to a swan-shaped container with blue liquid inside - “will kill you very painfully.”

“Awesome,” I said. I couldn’t hear her very well. The light was too strong, and I found that I was sleepy.

“Jason,” Piper said. “We’ve got a job to do. Remember?”

I blinked. Thinking was a little hard when I was this tired. And we still had so many things to see. Maybe she’d have something for my amnesia?

“Job to do,” I muttered. “Sure. But shopping first, okay?”

The princess beamed. “Then we have potions for resisting fire—”

“Got that covered,” Leo said.

“Indeed?” The princess studied Leo’s face more closely. “You don’t appear to be wearing my trademark sunscreen …but no matter. We also have potions that cause blindness, insanity, sleep, or—”

“Wait.” Piper was still staring at the red vial. “Could that potion cure lost memory?”

The princess narrowed her eyes. “Possibly. Yes. Quite possibly. Why, my dear? Have you forgotten something important?”

Hey, that wasn’t a bad idea. Piper didn’t say that the potion was for me, and the part of me that wasn’t aching to fall asleep after a great day of shopping appreciated it. The princess was really nice, but I still didn’t want to advertise my empty head.

“How much?” Piper asked.

The princess got a faraway look in her eyes. “Well, now … The price is always tricky. I love helping people. Honestly, I do. And I always keep my bargains, but sometimes people try to cheat me.” Her gaze drifted to me. “Once, for instance, I met a handsome young man who wanted a treasure from my father’s kingdom. We made a bargain, and I promised to help him steal it.”

“From your own dad?” I frowned. That didn’t sound quite right.

“Oh, don’t worry,” the princess said. “I demanded a high price. The young man had to take me away with him. He was quite good-looking, dashing, strong …” She looked at Piper. “I’m sure, my dear, you understand how one might be attracted to such a hero, and want to help him.”

Piper gave her an angry look, but I didn’t really notice.

“At any rate,” Her Highness continued, “my hero had to do many impossible tasks, and I’m not bragging when I say he couldn’t have done them without me. I betrayed my own family to win the hero his prize. And still he cheated me of my payment.”

“Cheated?” That struck a chord, somewhere in my mind. A new memory, trying to break through the surface. But I was too tired.

“That’s messed up,” Leo said.

Her Highness patted his cheek affectionately. “I’m sure you don’t need to worry, Leo. You seem honest. You would always pay a fair price, wouldn’t you?”

Leo nodded. “What were we buying again? I’ll take two.”

Piper broke in: “So, the vial, Your Highness—how much?”

The princess assessed Piper. “Would you give anything for it, my dear?” she princess asked. “I sense that you would.”

Piper half stumbled. I saw her take a deep breath, and strengthen her stance.

“No, I won’t pay any price. But a fair price, maybe. After that, we need to leave. Right, guys?”

Wait, what? Leave? We were doing that?

“Leave?” I asked. Leave where?

“You mean … after shopping?” Leo asked.

The princess turned to Piper again.

“Impressive,” she said. “Not many people could resist my suggestions. Are you a child of Aphrodite, my dear? Ah, yes—I should have seen it. No matter. Perhaps we should shop a while longer before you decide what to buy, eh?”

“But the vial—”

“Now, boys. Would you like to see more?”

That sounded great.

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay,” Leo said. “Excellent,” the princess said. “You’ll need all the help you can get if you’re to make it to the Bay Area.”

I only half-heard the rest of the conversation.

“The Bay Area?” Piper said. “Why the Bay Area?”

The princess smiled. “Well, that’s where they’ll die, isn’t it?”

We went up the escalators, to the clothing departments. Leo laughed as he tried on a hat that seemed to be made from enchanted raccoon fur. Its ringed tail twitched, and its little legs wiggled frantically as Leo walked. I checked out the men’s sportswear. Piper and the princess talked behind us. I hoped they were getting along.

I went through the racks, looking at the items on display. There were a lot of them, all amazing, but I didn’t have any money. And there was still something on my mind that I couldn’t catch. I was too tired for that.

Something caught my eye.

“Hey, check it out!”

From a rack labeled distressed clothing, I held up a purple T-shirt like the one I’d worn when I’d first woken up—except this shirt looked as if it had been clawed by tigers.

I frowned. “Why does this look so familiar?”

“Jason, it’s like yours,” Piper said. “Now we really have to leave.”

Her voice was very, very low, as if she was talking from miles away. I turned the t-shirt up and down, trying to figure out what was it that bothered me.

“Nonsense,” the princess said. “The boys aren’t done, are they? And yes, my dear. Those shirts are very popular—trade-ins from previous customers. It suits you.”

Leo picked up an orange Camp Half-Blood tee with a hole through the middle, as if it had been hit by a javelin. Next to that was a dented bronze breastplate pitted with corrosion—acid, maybe? —and a Roman toga slashed to pieces and stained with something that looked disturbingly like dried blood.

“Your Highness,” Piper said, trying to control her nerves. “Why don’t you tell the boys how you betrayed your family? I’m sure they’d like to hear that story.”

That was a good idea.

“More story?” Leo asked.

“I like more story!” If it would take away the bother in my mind, sure.

The princess looked slightly irritated.

“Oh, one will do strange things for love, Piper. You should know that. I fell for that young hero, in fact, because your mother Aphrodite had me under a spell. If it wasn’t for her—but I can’t hold a grudge against a goddess, can I?”

“But that hero took you with him when he fled Colchis,” Piper remembered. “Didn’t he, Your Highness? He married you just as he promised.”

“At first,” she said, sounding sad, “it seemed he would keep his word. But even after I helped him steal my father’s treasure, he still needed my help. As we fled, my brother’s fleet came after us. His warships overtook us. He would have destroyed us, but I convinced my brother to come aboard our ship first and talk under a flag of truce. He trusted me.”

“And you killed your own brother,” Piper said.

“What?” That was worse than the tugs at my memory. Why was she saying this? “Killed your own—”

“No,” the princess snapped. “Those stories are lies. It was my new husband and his men who killed my brother, though they couldn’t have done it without my deception. They threw his body into the sea, and the pursuing fleet had to stop and search for it so they could give my brother a proper burial. This gave us time to get away. All this, I did for my husband. And he forgot our bargain. He betrayed me in the end.”

I wasn’t sure yet. “What did he do?”

The princess held the sliced-up toga against my chest, as if measuring me. “Don’t you know the story, my boy? You of all people should. You were named for him.”

“Jason,” Piper said. “The original Jason. But then you’re —you should be dead!”

The princess smiled. “As I said, a new life in a new country. Certainly, I made mistakes. I turned my back on my own people. I was called a traitor, a thief, a liar, a murderess. But I acted out of love.” She turned to Leo and me, and she looked so sad I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her. “Wouldn’t you do the same for someone you loved, my dears?”

“Oh, sure,” I said.

“Okay,” Leo said.

“Guys!” Piper was getting angry. What was up with her?. “Don’t you see who she is? Don’t you—”

“Let’s continue, shall we?” the princess said breezily. “I believe you wanted to talk about a price for the storm spirits—and your satyr.”

We went up, but Leo got distracted on the second floor with the appliances.

“No way,” he said. “Is that an armored forge?”

He hopped off the escalator and ran over to a big oval oven that looked like a barbecue on steroids.

When we caught up with him, the princess said, “You have good taste. This is the H-2000, designed by Hephaestus himself. Hot enough to melt Celestial bronze or Imperial gold.”

My dazed brain tried to jump, and failed. “Imperial gold?”

The princess nodded. “Yes, my dear. Like that weapon so cleverly concealed in your pocket. To be properly forged, Imperial gold had to be consecrated in the Temple of Jupiter on Capitoline Hill in Rome. Quite a powerful and rare metal, but like the Roman emperors, quite volatile. Be sure never to break that blade…” She smiled pleasantly. “Rome was after my time, of course, but I do hear stories. And now over here—this golden throne is one of my finest luxury items. Hephaestus made it as a punishment for his mother, Hera. Sit in it and you’ll be immediately trapped.”

Leo began walking toward it.

“Leo, don’t!” Piper warned.

He blinked. “How much for both?”

“Oh, the seat I could let you have for five great deeds. The forge, seven years of servitude. And for only a bit of your strength—” She led Leo into the appliance section, giving him prices on various items.

I wanted to go with them, but Piper pulled me aside and slapped me. Hard.

“Ow,” I muttered. My words weren’t really working. “What was that for?”

“Snap out of it!” Piper hissed.

Out of what?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“She’s charmspeaking you. Can’t you feel it?”

I frowned. “She seems okay.”

“She’s not okay! She shouldn’t even be alive! She was married to Jason—the other Jason—three thousand years ago. Remember what Boreas said—something about the souls no longer being confined to Hades? It’s not just monsters who can’t stay dead. She’s come back from the Underworld!”

I shook my head. This conversation was making me uncomfortable. “She’s not a ghost.”

“No, she’s worse! She’s—”

“Children.” The princess was back with Leo in tow. “If you please, we will now see what you came for. That is what you want, yes?”

We took the escalator down to the base of the fountain. For the first time, I noticed two large bronze sundials—each about the size of a trampoline—inlaid on the marble tile floor to the north and south of the fountain. The gilded oversize canary cages stood to the east and west, and the farthest one held the storm spirits. They were so densely packed, spinning around like a super-concentrated tornado, that I couldn’t tell how many there were—dozens, at least.

“Hey,” Leo said, “Coach Hedge looks okay!”

We ran to the nearest canary cage. The old satyr seemed to have been petrified at the moment he was sucked into the sky above the Grand Canyon. He was frozen mid-shout, his club raised over his head like he was ordering the gym class to drop and give him fifty. His curly hair stuck up at odd angles.

“Yes,” the princess said. “I always keep my wares in good condition. We can certainly barter for the storm spirits and the satyr. A package deal. If we come to terms, I’ll even throw in the vial of healing potion, and you can go in peace.” She gave Piper a look. “That’s better than starting unpleasantness, isn’t it, dear?”

I turned to Piper. Come on, say yes, I pleaded silently. If we could leave without a fight, wouldn’t it be much better?

“We can negotiate,” she said.

“Totally!” Leo agreed. “Name your price.”

“Leo!” Piper snapped.

The princess chuckled. “Name my price? Perhaps not the best haggling strategy, my boy, but at least you know a thing’s value. Freedom is very valuable indeed. You would ask me to release this satyr, who attacked my storm winds—”

“Who attacked us,” Piper interjected.

Her Highness shrugged. “As I said, my patron asks me for small favors from time to time. Sending the storm spirits to abduct you—that was one. I assure you it was nothing personal. And no harm done, as you came here, in the end, of your own free will! At any rate, you want the satyr freed, and you want my storm spirits—who are very valuable servants, by the way—so you can hand them over to that tyrant Aeolus. Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it? The price will be high.”

Before I could say anything, Piper stepped in.

“You’re Medea,” she said. “You helped the original Jason steal the Golden Fleece. You’re one of the most evil villains in Greek mythology. Jason, Leo—don’t trust her.”

My brain half woke up. I looked up at the princess, and this time she didn’t look half as nice as she had all this time. I stepped away. Leo scratched his head and looked around like he was coming out of a dream.

“What are we doing, again?”

“Boys!” The princess spread her hands in a welcoming gesture. Her diamond jewelry glittered. “It’s true, I’m Medea. But I’m so misunderstood. Oh, Piper, my dear, you don’t know what it was like for women in the old days. We had no power, no leverage. Often we couldn’t even choose our own husbands. But I was different. I chose my own destiny by becoming a sorceress. Is that so wrong? I made a pact with Jason: my help to win the fleece, in exchange for his love. A fair deal. He became a famous hero! Without me, he would’ve died unknown on the shores of Colchis.”

I scowled. “Then … you really did die three thousand years ago? You came back from the Underworld?”

“Death no longer holds me, young hero,” Medea said. “Thanks to my patron, I am flesh and blood again.”

“You … re-formed?” Leo blinked. “Like a monster?”

Medea spread her fingers, and steam hissed from her nails, like water splashed on hot iron. “You have no idea what’s happening, do you, my dears? It is so much worse than a stirring of monsters from Tartarus. My patron knows that giants and monsters are not her greatest servants. I am mortal. I learn from my mistakes. And now that I have returned to the living, I will not be cheated again. Now, here is my price for what you ask.”

“Guys,” Piper said. “The original Jason left Medea because she was crazy and bloodthirsty.”

“Lies!” Medea said.

“On the way back from Colchis, Jason’s ship landed at another kingdom, and Jason agreed to dump Medea and marry the king’s daughter.”

“After I bore him two children!” Medea said. “Still he broke his promise! I ask you, was that right?”

I shook my head in agreement, but Piper wasn’t through.

“It may not have been right,” she said, “but neither was Medea’s revenge. She murdered her own children to get back at Jason. She poisoned his new wife and fled the kingdom.”

Medea snarled. “An invention to ruin my reputation! The people of the Corinth—that unruly mob—killed my children and drove me out. Jason did nothing to protect me. He robbed me of everything. So yes, I sneaked back into the palace and poisoned his lovely new bride. It was only fair—a suitable price.”

“You’re insane,” Piper said.

“I am the victim!” Medea wailed. “I died with my dreams shattered, but no longer. I know now not to trust heroes. When they come asking for treasures, they will pay a heavy price. Especially when the one asking has the name of Jason!”

The fountain turned bright red. Piper drew her dagger.

“Jason, Leo—it’s time to go. Now.”

“Before you’ve closed the deal?” Medea asked. “What of your quest, boys? And my price is so easy. Did you know this fountain is magic? If a dead man were to be thrown into it, even if he was chopped to pieces, he would pop back out fully formed—stronger and more powerful than ever.”

“Seriously?” Leo asked.

“Leo, she’s lying,” Piper said. “She did that trick with somebody before—a king, I think. She convinced his daughters to cut him to pieces so he could come out of the water young and healthy again, but it just killed him!”

“Ridiculous,” Medea said. “Leo, Jason—my price is so simple. Why don’t you two fight? If you get injured, or even killed, no problem. We’ll just throw you into the fountain and you’ll be better than ever. You do want to fight, don’t you? You resent each other!”

“Guys, no!” Piper said.

But I was already glaring at Leo, suddenly realizing how annoying he was. How useless. If part of my mind didn’t believe what the princess was saying, I couldn’t hear it.

Leo scowled. “Jason’s always the star. He always gets the attention and takes me for granted.”

“You’re annoying, Leo,” I said. “You never take anything seriously. You can’t even fix a dragon.”

“Stop!” Piper pleaded, but I drew my gold sword, and Leo a hammer from his tool belt.

“Let them go, Piper,” Medea urged. “I’m doing you a favor. Let it happen now, and it will make your choice so much easier. Enceladus will be pleased. You could have your father back today!”

I could barely hear their voices, and the part of me that still doubted what I was doing was gaining power. Fight Leo? Why would I want that? He was my friend, wasn’t he?

No, he isn’t, the voice of the princess said. He laughs at you and never takes anything seriously. You hate him.

Did I? if I knew something, was that if I wasn’t sure, it was best not to fight. I stood my ground, just in case he attacked me, but I didn’t make a move. Leo looked confused, hammer raised but feet planted on the ground.

“Listen to me, girl.” Medea plucked a diamond off her bracelet and threw it into a spray of water from the fountain.

As it passed through the multicolored light, Medea said, “O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, show me the office of Tristan McLean.”

The mist shimmered, and I saw a study. Sitting behind a desk, talking on the phone, was Piper’s dad’s assistant, Jane, in her dark business suit, her hair swirled in a tight bun.

“Hello, Jane,” Medea said.

Jane hung up the phone calmly. “How can I help you, ma’am? Hello, Piper.”

“You—” Piper choked on her words.

“Yes, child,” Medea said. “Your father’s assistant. Quite easy to manipulate. An organized mind for a mortal, but incredibly weak.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Jane said.

“Don’t mention it,” Medea said. “I just wanted to congratulate you, Jane. Getting Mr. McLean to leave town so suddenly, take his jet to Oakland without alerting the press or the police—well done! No one seems to know where he’s gone. And telling him his daughter’s life was on the line—that was a nice touch to get his cooperation.”

“Yes,” Jane agreed in a bland tone, as if she were sleepwalking. “He was quite cooperative when he believed Piper was in danger.”

“I may have new orders for you, Jane,” Medea said. “If the girl cooperates, it may be time for Mr. McLean to come home. Would you arrange a suitable cover story for his absence, just in case? And I imagine the poor man will need some time in a psychiatric hospital.”

“Yes, ma’am. I will stand by.”

The image faded, and Medea turned to Piper. “There, you see?”

“You lured my dad into a trap,” Piper said. “You helped the giant—”

“Oh, please, dear. You’ll work yourself into a fit! I’ve been preparing for this war for years, even before I was brought back to life. I’m a seer, as I said. I can tell the future as well as your little oracle. Years ago, still suffering in the Fields of Punishment, I had a vision of the seven in your so-called Great Prophecy. I saw your friend Leo here, and saw that he would be an important enemy someday. I stirred the consciousness of my patron, gave her this information, and she managed to wake just a little—just enough to visit him.”

“Leo’s mother,” Piper said. “Leo, listen to this! She helped get your mother killed!”

“Uh-huh,” Leo mumbled, in a daze. He frowned at his hammer. “So … I just attack Jason? That’s okay?”

“Perfectly safe,” Medea promised. “And Jason, strike him hard. Show me you are worthy of your namesake.”

“No!” Piper ordered. “Jason, Leo—she’s tricking you. Put down your weapons.”

The sorceress rolled her eyes. “Please, girl. You’re no match for me. I trained with my aunt, the immortal Circe. I can drive men mad or heal them with my voice. What hope do these puny young heroes have against me? Now, boys, kill each other!”

“Jason, Leo, listen to me. Medea is charming you. It’s part of her magic. You are best friends. Don’t fight each other. Fight her!”

It was like waking up from a deep slumber. All the thoughts I hadn’t had for half an hour poured onto my head, amnesia headache included, and I assessed the situation faster than I had ever done it in my entire life.

I blinked. “Leo, was I just about to stab you?”

“Something about my mother …?” Leo frowned, then turned toward Medea. “You … you’re working for Dirt Woman. You sent her to the machine shop.” He lifted his arm. “Lady, I got a three-pound hammer with your name on it.”

“Bah!” Medea sneered. “I’ll simply collect payment another way.” She pressed one of the mosaic tiles on the floor, and the building rumbled.

I swung my sword at Medea, but she dissolved into smoke and reappeared at the base of the escalator.

“You’re slow, hero!” She laughed. “Take your frustration out on my pets!”

Before I could go after her, the giant bronze sundials at either end of the fountain swung open. Two snarling gold beasts—flesh-and-blood winged dragons—crawled out from the pits below. Each was the size of a camper van, maybe not large compared to Festus, but large enough.

“So that’s what’s in the kennels,” Leo said meekly.

The dragons spread their wings and hissed. Piper could feel the heat coming off their glittering skin. One turned his angry orange eyes on her.

“Don’t look them in the eye!” I warned. My instincts hadn’t liked being put away, and they were screaming at me from every corner of my brain. “They’ll paralyze you.”

“Indeed!” Medea was leisurely riding the escalator up, leaning against the handrail as she watched the fun. “These two dears have been with me a long time—sun dragons, you know, gifts from my grandfather Helios. They pulled my chariot when I left Corinth, and now they will be your destruction. Tata!”

The dragons lunged. Leo and I charged to intercept. I ran for the left, and Leo to the right. I don’t know if Leo’s demigod instincts had had as bad a time as mine, but he was impeccable. He rolled on the floor, hitting his dragon on the knee, and making it stumble. In that moment, I knew that I didn’t have to protect him. Leo was more than capable.

I stabbed at my dragon, flying and jabbing and helping out Leo whenever I could. He landed a few punches on both dragons. Not once did we bump into each other. My brain did another jog, but I forced it to wait. Survive first. Memories later.

Piper went after Medea, and I soon lost sight of her.

“Get their attention!” Leo yelled. “Let me call Festus!”

“Good idea!”

I called the winds, and made them blow on the sun dragon’s muzzles. “Hey, lizards! Over here!”

Leo blew his safety whistle. The sun dragons tried to go back to him, but I had a good hold of the winds. They stumbled upon each other, but kept fighting. I jumped and flew, trying to avoid their glances.

There was a clanging noise above us, and then a ruckus. The sound of glass being broken in a million pieces. I didn’t dare look. Leo kept blowing on his whistle, but Festus was nowhere to be seen.

“Leo!” I yelled. “I can’t contain them for much longer!”

Leo threw away the whistle. Let’s go again, his eyes said.

I let the winds go, and the dragons lunged at us again.

“Fool!” I heard Medea wailing. “Do you have any idea what so many potions will do when mixed?”

“Kill you?” Piper’s voice said.

The sun dragon almost got me with its jaws, but I was ready. I jumped over it, aiding myself with the air, and stabbed it in the back. Golden ichor came out of the wound, but it was not enough. It turned around, and I rolled just in time to avoid the hot flames.

“Jason, help!” It was Leo. I risked a quick look, and cursed. The other dragon had Leo pinned to the floor. It was baring its fangs, ready to snap, and I was all the way across the room battling the other dragon, much too far away to assist.

“You’ve doomed us all!” Medea screamed. Smoke rose from where they were, filling the store with a horrible stench. “You have only seconds before this concoction consumes everything and destroys the building. There’s no time—”

CRASH!

The stained glass ceiling splintered in a rain of multicolored shards, and Festus the bronze dragon dropped into the department store. He hustled into the fray, snatching up a sun dragon in each claw. Only now did I appreciate just how big and strong our metal friend was.

“That’s my boy!” Leo yelled.

Festus flew halfway up the atrium, then hurled the sun dragons into the pits they’d come from. Leo raced to the fountain and pressed the marble tile, closing the sundials. They shuddered as the dragons banged against them, trying to get out, but for the moment they were contained.

I heard Medea cursing in some ancient language. The whole fourth floor was on fire now. The air filled with noxious gas. Piper was backed up against the railing, but I couldn’t see Medea.

“Dude, come on!” Leo called.

I jumped on Festus’ back. Leo was already on his seat. One of his hands shone with red flames.

“I will not be abandoned again!” The sorceress knelt and snatched up the red healing potion, which had somehow survived the crash. “You want your boyfriend’s memory restored? Take me with you!”

Festus flapped his mighty wings, snatched the two cages with the satyr and the storm spirits in his claws, and began to ascend. The building rumbled. Fire and the smoke curled up the walls, melting the railings, turning the air to acid.

“You’ll never survive your quest without me!” Medea growled. “Your boy hero will stay ignorant forever, and your father will die. Take me with you!”

Piper jumped over the side. She plummeted for only a second before we caught her, hauling her aboard the dragon. I heard Medea screaming in rage as we soared through the broken roof and over downtown Chicago.

The department store blew up behind us.


	12. Not interested in your gold, thanks

She had just saved us, but Piper didn’t look half happy about it. She stayed silent until we were so far from Chicago that we couldn’t even see its tallest buildings. Only then, she turned around and gave me a small smile.

“Thanks for that, Piper,” I managed. “We would’ve died without you.”

She shrugged self-consciously.

“What Medea did with her charmspeak…” Piper shuddered, but I got a feeling it wasn’t from the cold. “I never want to do that to anyone. Ever.”

She set her jaw, as if she needed to prove it.

“I know you don’t,” I said. “And I don’t think you will. Just because she has the same powers as you doesn’t mean that you are like her.”

Piper nodded, but the sadness in her eyes didn’t leave. I rubbed her arms to keep her from the cold. I considered saying something else, but the look on her face told me that she wouldn’t welcome it.

I don’t think Leo had listened much to the conversation. He was inclined over Festus’s head.

“Good job, buddy.” He patted the dragon’s metal hide. “You did awesome.”

The dragon shuddered. Gears popped and clicked in his neck.

“I’ll give you a tune-up next time we land,” Leo promised. “You’ve earned some motor oil and Tabasco sauce.”

Festus whirled his teeth. He flew at a steady pace, his great wings angling to catch the wind, following a shining trail over the clouds. Even from the back, Leo looked worried.

I bit my lip. Those things I’d told him… I knew they hadn’t come out of nowhere, but that didn’t mean I was proud of thinking like that sometimes. Leo was a great friend, and I was scared of how easily Medea had pit me against him.

“Leo.” Piper patted his shoulder. “You feeling okay?”

“Yeah … not bad for a brainwashed zombie.” He laughed nervously. “Thanks for saving us back there, beauty queen. If you hadn’t talked me out of that spell—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Piper said.

There was a short silence. I’m pretty sure that both Leo and I were worrying.

“We’re going to have to put down soon,” Leo warned. “Couple more hours, maybe, to make sure Medea’s not following us. I don’t think Festus can fly much longer than that.”

“Yeah,” Piper agreed. “Coach Hedge probably wants to get out of his canary cage, too. Question is—where are we going?”

“The Bay Area,” Leo guessed. It seemed right. My memories of the department store were fuzzy, but I seemed to remember hearing that. “Didn’t Medea say something about Oakland?”

Piper was silent for so long that I knew there was something else going on.

“Piper’s dad,” I put in, trying not to sound as nervous as I felt. “Something’s happened to your dad, right? He got lured into some kind of trap.”

Piper let out a shaky breath. “Look, Medea said you would both die in the Bay Area. And besides … even if we went there, the Bay Area is huge! First we need to find Aeolus and drop off the storm spirits. Boreas said Aeolus was the only one who could tell us exactly where to go.”

Leo grunted. “So how do we find Aeolus?”

I leaned forward. “You mean you don’t see it?”

I pointed at the trail, but Leo and Piper just frowned.

“What?” Leo asked.

“That … whatever it is,” I said. “In the air.”

“Right,” Leo said. “Could you be more specific on the ‘whatever-it-is’ part?”

“Like a vapor trail,” I said, trying to explain. “Except it’s glowing. Really faint, but it’s definitely there. We’ve been following it since Chicago, so I figured you saw it.”

Leo shook his head. “Maybe Festus can sense it. You think Aeolus made it?”

“Well, it’s a magic trail in the wind,” I said. “Aeolus is the wind god. I think he knows we’ve got prisoners for him. He’s telling us where to fly.”

“Or it’s another trap,” Piper said.

Her tone worried me. She didn’t just sound nervous. She sounded broken with despair, like we’d already sealed our fate, and like it was her fault. Leo glanced back, and I knew we were thinking the same.

“Pipes, you all right?” Leo asked.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, fine. You don’t like any of the names I make up for you. But if your dad’s in trouble and we can help—”

“You can’t,” she said, her voice getting shakier. “Look, I’m tired. If you don’t mind …”

She leaned back against me and closed her eyes. All right, I thought—pretty clear signal she didn’t want to talk.

We flew in silence for a while. Festus followed the trail, gently curving toward the southwest and hopefully Aeolus’s fortress. Another wind god to visit, a whole new flavor of crazy—Oh, boy, I couldn’t wait.

Leo started nodding off.

“Catch a few Z’s,” I said. “It’s cool. Hand me the reins.”

“Nah, I’m okay—”

“Leo,” I said, “you’re not a machine. Besides, I’m the only one who can see the vapor trail. I’ll make sure we stay on course.”

“All right. Maybe just …” He had barely given me the reins, and he was already asleep.

Again, I let both of them sleep. I was slowly realizing that I didn’t usually run on much sleep, and I liked having the time to think for myself.

My brain had literally not stopped working ever since Piper had broken the spell. New memories, triggered by Medea’s words, tugged at the corners of my mind.

_“That looks like an elephant,” I said, pointing at the stars._

_“No, it doesn’t.” She made a face at me. “You don’t know shit about constellations.”_

_I mocked offense, even though she was right. “Excuse you, I’m very well versed in the sky. That is totally the Dumbo constellation. They named it that because Hannibal’s elephant was called that.”_

_She arched an eyebrow. “Really? I thought it was because of the Disney movie.”_

_“Disney didn’t exist in Ancient Rome, Rey. Get your facts straight.”_

_“Straight? That’s not going to be easy.”_

_She laughed, and I joined her._

The rest was clouded, but I could hear her words as clear as day. She’d worn her long brown hair in a braid, and I had the feeling that she didn’t smile easily. But she had laughed in my memory, and I knew that it was a precious one.

Her face was still hidden from me, but I was doing better. She had been my friend. Close as family, I knew that.

Where was she now? Was she looking for me?

Maybe, if I’d had more time, I would have remembered something else. I don’t know. The thing is that I didn’t, because for the second time in two days, Festus crashed against the empty air, and we plummeted down.

I clutched the reins as hard as I could, but poor Festus wasn’t in good shape.

“Leo! Piper! Wake up!”

Piper’s eyes snapped open. “What’s going on?”

I didn’t answer. The sky was full of lights, and I didn’t have a good feeling about it.

“Leo!” I called. “Leo, wake up!”

We spiraled through in a free fall, still on the dragon’s back, but Festus’s hide was cold. His ruby eyes were dim.

“Not again!” Leo yelled. I wished he hadn’t had such an awful awakening. “You can’t fall again!”

Leo could barely hold on, but he managed to pull open the panel on the dragon’s neck. He toggled the switches. He tugged the wires. The dragon’s wings flapped once, but Festus didn’t have the strength to keep flying, and Leo couldn’t get to the main control panel on the dragon’s head—not in midair.

I saw the lights of a city below us—just flashes in the dark as we plummeted in circles. We had only seconds before we crashed.

“Jason!” Leo screamed. “Take Piper and fly out of here!”

“What?”

“We need to lighten the load! I might be able to reboot Festus, but he’s carrying too much weight!”

“What about you?” Piper cried. “If you can’t reboot him—”

“I’ll be fine,” Leo yelled. “Just follow me to the ground. Go!”

I grabbed Piper around the waist. We unbuckled our harnesses, and stopped in the air. Leo kept on working on Festus’ head, but I could barely see what he was doing.

We followed them at close range, just in case. If Leo couldn’t fix Festus… I didn’t want to think about it. Leo summoned fire in his hand so he could see what he was doing, but the wind kept extinguishing it.

He must have managed something, because Festus groaned—metal creaking inside his neck. His eyes flickered weakly to life, and he spread his wings. Their fall turned into a steep glide.

“Good!” Leo said, so happy that I actually heard him despite the wind. “Come on, big boy. Come on!”

They were still flying in way too hot, and the ground was too close. They needed a place to land—fast.

On the riverbanks, I spotted a white mansion with a huge snowy lawn inside a tall brick perimeter fence—like some rich person’s private compound, all of it blazing with light. A perfect landing field. Leo steered the dragon toward it, and Festus seemed to come back to life. They could make this!

Then everything went wrong. As they approached the lawn, spotlights along the fence fixed on them. The lights on the sky exploded next to them. I heard bursts like tracer fire, the sound of metal being cut to shreds—and BOOM.

Piper and I landed directly over them, falling on our faces to avoid the lights. Piper squirmed, but I pinned her to the ground one, two, three seconds, until the spotlights went back up.

I looked around us. “Oh, gods.”

Leo was lying in the snow, covered in mud and grease. He looked okay, but Festus–

The lawn was a complete wreckage. Festus must have dropped the big canary cages as he came over the fence, because they’d rolled in different directions and landed on their sides, perfectly undamaged.

Festus hadn’t been so lucky.

The dragon had disintegrated. His limbs were scattered across the lawn. His tail hung on the fence. The main section of his body had plowed a trench twenty feet wide and fifty feet long across the mansion’s yard before breaking apart. What remained of his hide was a charred, smoking pile of scraps. Only his neck and head were somewhat intact, resting across a row of frozen rosebushes like a pillow.

I was too stunned to speak. Festus was dead. I repeated the thought in my head a couple of times, trying to take it in. Festus was dead.

Next to me, Piper choked back a sob. “Jason, when Leo wakes up…”

It was freezing cold, but I managed to get even colder. The thought of Leo seeing all of this made me sick. He had worked so hard on Festus. He didn’t deserve it.

We crouched over him. I took of my jacket and put it over him, trying to warm him up. Hypothermia would be the cherry on top of our horrible day.

Leo opened his eyes slowly, looking confused. He spit a clump of frozen grass out of his mouth.

“Where—”

“Lie still.” Piper was trying not to cry, but she couldn’t help it. “You rolled pretty hard when—when Festus—”

“Where is he?” Leo sat up, but he wavered.

“Seriously, Leo,” I said. “You could be hurt. You shouldn’t—”

Leo pushed himself to his feet, and saw Festus.

His face fell.

“No,” he sobbed. He ran to the dragon’s head and stroked its snout. The dragon’s eyes flickered weakly. Oil leaked out of his ear. “You can’t go,” Leo pleaded. “You’re the best thing I ever fixed.”

The dragon’s head whirred its gears, as if it were purring. Piper and I stood next to him, but Leo kept his eyes fixed on the dragon.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

The dragon clicked. Long creak. Two short clicks. Creak. Creak. Almost like a pattern. Leo put his ear to Festus’ head, listening intently.

“Yeah,” he said. “I understand. I will. I promise.”

The dragon’s eyes went dark. Festus was gone.

Leo cried. I crouched next to him with a hand on his shoulder, and Piper hugged him. She murmured something, I’m not sure what, but I don’t think he heard it. He leaned into Piper’s embrace, sobbing his heart out.

“I’m so sorry, man,” I said gently. “What did you promise Festus?”

Leo sniffled. He opened the dragon’s head panel, and I saw that the control disk was cracked and burned beyond repair.

“Something my dad told me,” Leo said. “Everything can be reused.”

“Your dad talked to you?” I asked. “When was this?”

Leo didn’t answer. He worked at the dragon’s neck hinges until the head was detached. It must have weighed about a hundred pounds, but Leo managed to hold it in his arms.

He looked up at the starry sky and said, “Take him back to the bunker, Dad. Please, until I can reuse him. I’ve never asked you for anything.”

The wind picked up, and the dragon’s head floated out of Leo’s arms like it weighed nothing. It flew into the sky and disappeared.

Piper looked at him in amazement. “He answered you?”

“I had a dream,” Leo managed. “Tell you later.”

It wasn’t much of an explanation, but I knew he needed time. Something in him had just been broken, and I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to repair it.

I stood up. The large white mansion glowed in the center of the grounds. Tall brick walls with lights and security cameras surrounded the perimeter, but I guessed it was way better protected than that.

“Where are we?” Leo asked. “I mean, what city?”

“Omaha, Nebraska,” Piper said. “I saw a billboard as we flew in. But I don’t know what this mansion is. We came in right behind you, but as you were landing, Leo, I swear it looked like—I don’t know—”

“Lasers,” Leo said.

He picked up a piece of dragon wreckage and threw it toward the top of the fence. Immediately a turret popped up from the brick wall and a beam of pure heat incinerated the bronze plating to ashes.

I whistled. “Some defense system. How are we even alive?”

“Festus,” Leo said miserably. “He took the fire. The lasers sliced him to bits as he came in so they didn’t focus on you. I led him into a death trap.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Piper said. “He saved our lives again.”

There was a silence.

“What do we do now?” I murmured. “The main gates are locked, and I’m guessing I can’t fly us out of here without getting shot down.”

Leo looked up the walkway at the big white mansion. “Since we can’t go out, we’ll have to go in.”

I would have died five times on the way to the front door if not for Leo.

First it was the motion-activated trapdoor on the sidewalk, then the lasers on the steps, then the nerve gas dispenser on the porch railing, the pressure-sensitive poison spikes in the welcome mat, and of course the exploding doorbell.

Leo deactivated all of them. It was like he could smell the traps, and he picked just the right tool out of his belt to disable them.

“You’re amazing, man,” I said.

Leo scowled as he examined the front door lock. “Yeah, amazing,” he said. “Can’t fix a dragon right, but I’m amazing.”

“Hey, that wasn’t your—”

“Front door’s already unlocked,” Leo announced.

Piper stared at the door in disbelief. “It is? All those traps, and the door’s unlocked?”

Leo turned the knob. The door swung open easily. He stepped inside without hesitation.

Before I could follow, Piper caught my arm. “He’s going to need some time to get over Festus. Don’t take it personally.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, okay.”

But still I felt terrible. Back in Medea’s store, I’d said some pretty harsh stuff to Leo—stuff a friend shouldn’t say, not to mention the fact I’d almost skewered Leo with a sword. If it hadn’t been for Piper, we’d both be dead. And Piper hadn’t gotten out of that encounter easily, either.

“Piper,” I said, “I know I was in a daze back in Chicago, but that stuff about your dad—if he’s in trouble, I want to help. I don’t care if it’s a trap or not.”

Her eyes were always sad, but now they looked shattered, as if she’d seen something she just couldn’t cope with.

“Jason, you don’t know what you’re saying. Please—don’t make me feel worse. Come on. We should stick together.”

She ducked inside.

“Together,” I murmured. “Yeah, we’re doing great with that.”

My first impression of the house: Dark.

From the echo of my footsteps I could tell the entry hall was enormous, even bigger than Boreas’s penthouse; but the only illumination came from the yard lights outside. A faint glow peeked through the breaks in the thick velvet curtains. The windows rose about ten feet tall. Spaced between them along the walls were life-size metal statues.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw sofas arranged in a U in the middle of the room, with a central coffee table and one large chair at the far end. A massive chandelier glinted overhead. Along the back wall stood a row of closed doors.

“Where’s the light switch?” My voice echoed alarmingly through the room.

“Don’t see one,” Leo said.

“Fire?” Piper suggested.

Leo held out his hand, but nothing happened. “It’s not working.”

“Your fire is out? Why?” Piper asked.

“Well, if I knew that—”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “What do we do—explore?”

Leo shook his head. “After all those traps outside? Bad idea.”

My skin tingled. I hated being a demigod.

Looking around, I couldn’t see a comfortable room to hang out in. I imagined vicious storm spirits lurking in the curtains, dragons under the carpet, a chandelier made of lethal ice shards, ready to impale us.

“Leo’s right,” I said. “We’re not separating again—not like in Detroit.”

“Oh, thank you for reminding me of the Cyclopes.” Piper’s voice quavered. “I needed that.”

“It’s a few hours until dawn,” I guessed. “Too cold to wait outside. Let’s bring the cages in and make camp in this room. Wait for daylight; then we can decide what to do.”

Nobody offered a better idea, so we rolled in the cages with Coach Hedge and the storm spirits, then settled in. Thankfully, Leo didn’t find any poison throw pillows or electric whoopee cushions on the sofas.

Leo didn’t seem in the mood to make more tacos. Besides, we had no fire, so we settled for cold rations.

As we ate, I studied the metal statues along the walls. They looked like Greek gods or heroes. Maybe that was a good sign. Or maybe they were used for target practice. On the coffee table sat a tea service and a stack of glossy brochures, but I couldn’t make out the words. The big chair at the other end of the table looked like a throne. None of us tried to sit in it.

The canary cages didn’t make the place any less creepy. The venti kept churning in their prison, hissing and spinning, and I got the uncomfortable feeling they were watching me. I could sense their hatred for the children of Zeus—the lord of the sky who’d ordered Aeolus to imprison their kind. The venti would like nothing better than to tear me apart.

As for Coach Hedge, he was still frozen mid-shout, his cudgel raised. Leo was working on the cage, trying to open it with various tools, but the lock seemed to be giving him a hard time. I decided not to sit next to him in case Hedge suddenly unfroze and went into ninja goat mode.

Despite how wired I felt, once my stomach was full, I started to nod off. The couches were a little too comfortable —a lot better than a dragon’s back—and I’d taken the last two watches while his friends slept. I was exhausted.

Piper had already curled up on the other sofa. Was she really asleep, or dodging a conversation about her dad? Whatever Medea had meant in Chicago, about Piper getting her dad back if she cooperated—it didn’t sound good. If Piper had risked her own dad to save us, that made me feel even guiltier.

And we were running out of time. If I had the days straight, this was early morning of December 20. Which meant tomorrow was the winter solstice.

“Get some sleep,” Leo said, still working on the locked cage. “It’s your turn.”

I took a deep breath. If I didn’t say this now, I never would, and then the guilt would eat me alive.

“Leo, I’m sorry about that stuff I said in Chicago. That wasn’t me. You’re not annoying and you do take stuff seriously —especially your work. I wish I could do half the things you can do.”

Leo lowered his screwdriver. He looked at the ceiling and shook his head like, _What am I gonna do with this guy?_

“I try very hard to be annoying,” he said. “Don’t insult my ability to annoy. And how am I supposed to resent you if you go apologizing? I’m a lowly mechanic. You’re like the prince of the sky, son of the Lord of the Universe. I’m supposed to resent you.”

“Lord of the Universe?”

“Sure, you’re all—bam! Lightning man. And ‘Watch me fly. I am the eagle that soars—’”

“Shut up, Valdez.”

Leo managed a little smile. “Yeah, see. I do annoy you.”

“I apologize for apologizing.”

“Thank you.”

He went back to work, but I was much more relaxed now. Leo still looked sad and exhausted—just not quite so angry.

“Go to sleep, Jason,” he ordered. “It’s gonna take a few hours to get this goat man free. Then I still got to figure out how to make the winds a smaller holding cell, ’cause I am not lugging that canary cage to California.”

“You did fix Festus, you know,” I said. “You gave him a purpose again. I think this quest was the high point of his life.”

I was afraid I’d blown it and made Leo mad again, but Leo just sighed.

“I hope,” he said. “Now, sleep, man. I want some time without you organic life forms.”

I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but I didn’t argue.

I only woke when the yelling started.

“Ahhhggggggh!”

I leaped to my feet, still half asleep. I wasn’t sure what was more jarring—the full sunlight that now bathed the room, or the screaming satyr.

“Coach is awake,” Leo said, which was kind of unnecessary. Gleeson Hedge was capering around on his furry hindquarters, swinging his club and yelling, “Die!” as he smashed the tea set, whacked the sofas, and charged at the throne.

“Coach!” I yelled.

Hedge turned, breathing hard. His eyes were so wild, I was afraid he might attack. The satyr was still wearing his orange polo shirt and his coach’s whistle, but his horns were clearly visible above his curly hair, and his beefy hindquarters were definitely all goat. Could you call a goat beefy? I put the thought aside.

“You’re the new kid,” Hedge said, lowering his club. “Jason.”

He looked at Leo, then Piper, who’d apparently also just woken up. Her hair looked like it had become a nest for a friendly hamster.

“Valdez, McLean,” the coach said. “What’s going on? We were at the Grand Canyon. The anemoi thuellai were attacking and—” He zeroed in on the storm spirit cage, and his eyes went back to DEFCON 1. “Die!”

“Whoa, Coach!” Leo stepped in his path, which was pretty brave, even though Hedge was six inches shorter. “It’s okay. They’re locked up. We just sprang you from the other cage.”

“Cage? Cage? What’s going on? Just because I’m a satyr doesn’t mean I can’t have you doing plank push-ups, Valdez!”

I cleared my throat. “Coach—Gleeson—um, whatever you want us to call you. You saved us at the Grand Canyon. You were totally brave.”

“Of course I was!”

“The extraction team came and took us to Camp Half-Blood. We thought we’d lost you. Then we got word the storm spirits had taken you back to their—um, operator, Medea.”

“That witch! Wait—that’s impossible. She’s mortal. She’s dead.” “

Yeah, well,” Leo said, “somehow she got not dead anymore.”

Hedge nodded, his eyes narrowing. “So! You were sent on a dangerous quest to rescue me. Excellent!”

“Um.” Piper got to her feet, holding out her hands so Coach Hedge wouldn’t attack her. “Actually, Glee—can I still call you Coach Hedge? Gleeson seems wrong. We’re on a quest for something else. We kind of found you by accident.”

“Oh.” The coach’s spirits seemed to deflate, but only for a second. Then his eyes lit up again. “But there are no accidents! Not on quests. This was meant to happen! So, this is the witch’s lair, eh? Why is everything gold?”

“Gold?” I looked around. From the way Leo and Piper caught their breath, I guessed they hadn’t noticed yet either. The room was full of gold—the statues, the tea set Hedge had smashed, the chair that was definitely a throne. Even the curtains—which seemed to have opened by themselves at daybreak—appeared to be woven of gold fiber.

“Nice,” Leo said. “No wonder they got so much security.”

“This isn’t—” Piper stammered. “This isn’t Medea’s place, Coach. It’s some rich person’s mansion in Omaha. We got away from Medea and crash landed here.”

“It’s destiny, cupcakes!” Hedge insisted. “I’m meant to protect you. What’s the quest?”

Before I could decide if I wanted to explain or just shove Coach Hedge back into his cage, a door opened at the far end of the room. A pudgy man in a white bathrobe stepped out with a golden toothbrush in his mouth. He had a white beard and one of those long, old-fashioned sleeping caps pressed down over his white hair.

He froze when he saw us, and the toothbrush fell out of his mouth. He glanced into the room behind him and called, “Son? Lit, come out here, please. There are strange people in the throne room.”

Coach Hedge did the obvious thing. He raised his club and shouted, “Die!”

It took all three of us to hold back the satyr.

“Whoa, Coach!” I said. “Bring it down a few notches.”

A younger man charged into the room. I guessed he must be Lit, the old guy’s son. He was dressed in pajama pants with a sleeveless T-shirt that said _Cornhuskers_ , and he held a sword that looked like it could husk a lot of things besides corn. His ripped arms were covered in scars, and his face, framed by curly dark hair, would’ve been handsome if it wasn’t also sliced up.

Lit immediately zeroed in on me like I was the biggest threat, and stalked toward me, swinging his sword overhead.

“Hold on!” Piper stepped forward, trying for her best calming voice. “This is just a misunderstanding! Everything’s fine.”

Lit stopped in his tracks, but he still looked wary. It didn’t help that Hedge was screaming, “I’ll get them! Don’t worry!”

“Coach,” Jason pleaded, “they may be friendly. Besides, we’re trespassing in their house.”

“Thank you!” said the old man in the bathrobe. “Now, who are you, and why are you here?”

“Let’s all put our weapons down,” Piper said. “Coach, you first.”

Hedge clenched his jaw. “Just one thwack?”

“No,” Piper said.

“What about a compromise? I’ll kill them first, and if it turns out they were friendly, I’ll apologize.”

“No!” Piper insisted.

“Meh.” Coach Hedge lowered his club. Piper gave Lit a friendly _sorry-about-that_ smile.

Lit huffed and sheathed his sword. “You speak well, girl—fortunately for your friends, or I would’ve run them through.”

“Appreciate it,” Leo said. “I try not to get run through before lunchtime.”

The old man in the bathrobe sighed, kicking the teapot that Coach Hedge had smashed. “Well, since you’re here. Please, sit down.”

Lit frowned. “Your Majesty—”

“No, no, it’s fine, Lit,” the old man said. “New land, new customs. They may sit in my presence. After all, they’ve seen me in my nightclothes. No sense observing formalities.” He did his best to smile, though it looked a little forced. “Welcome to my humble home. I am King Midas.”

“Midas? Impossible,” said Coach Hedge. “He died.”

We sat on the sofas, while the king reclined on his throne. Tricky to do that in a bathrobe, and I kept worrying the old guy would forget and uncross his legs. Hopefully, he was wearing golden boxers under there.

Lit stood behind the throne, both hands on his sword, glancing at Piper and flexing his muscular arms, just to be annoying. Piper sat forward.

“What our satyr friend means, Your Majesty, is that you’re the second mortal we’ve met who should be—sorry—dead. King Midas lived thousands of years ago.”

“Interesting.” The king gazed out the windows at the brilliant blue skies and the winter sunlight. In the distance, downtown Omaha looked like a cluster of children’s blocks —way too clean and small for a regular city. “

You know,” the king said, “I think I was a bit dead for a while. It’s strange. Seems like a dream, doesn’t it, Lit?”

“A very long dream, Your Majesty.”

“And yet, now we’re here. I’m enjoying myself very much. I like being alive better.”

“But how?” Piper asked. “You didn’t happen to have a … patron?”

Midas hesitated, but there was a sly twinkle in his eyes. “Does it matter, my dear?”

“We could kill them again,” Hedge suggested.

“Coach, not helping,” I said. “Why don’t you go outside and stand guard?”

Leo coughed. “Is that safe? They’ve got some serious security.”

“Oh, yes,” the king said. “Sorry about that. But it’s lovely stuff, isn’t it? Amazing what gold can still buy. Such excellent toys you have in this country!”

He fished a remote control out of his bathrobe pocket and pressed a few buttons—a pass code, probably.

“There,” Midas said. “Safe to go out now.”

Coach Hedge grunted. “Fine. But if you need me …” He winked meaningfully. Then he pointed at himself, pointed two fingers at their hosts, and sliced a finger across his throat. Very subtle sign language.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said.

After the satyr left, Piper tried another diplomatic smile. “So … you don’t know how you got here?”

“Oh, well, yes. Sort of,” the king said. He frowned at Lit. “Why did we pick Omaha, again? I know it wasn’t the weather.”

“The oracle,” Lit said.

“Yes! I was told there was an oracle in Omaha.” The king shrugged. “Apparently I was mistaken. But this is a rather nice house, isn’t it? Lit—it’s short for Lityerses, by the way—horrible name, but his mother insisted—Lit has plenty of wide-open space to practice his swordplay. He has quite a reputation for that. They called him the Reaper of Men back in the old days.”

“Oh.” Piper tried to sound enthusiastic. “How nice.”

Lit’s smile was more of a cruel sneer. I was now one hundred percent sure I didn’t like this guy, and I was starting to regret sending Hedge outside.

“So,” I said. “All this gold—”

The king’s eyes lit up. “Are you here for gold, my boy? Please, take a brochure!”

I looked at the pamphlets on the coffee table. The title said _GOLD: Invest for Eternity_.

“Um, you sell gold?”

“No, no,” the king said. “I make it. In uncertain times like these, gold is the wisest investment, don’t you think? Governments fall. The dead rise. Giants attack Olympus. But gold retains its value!”

Leo frowned. “I’ve seen that commercial.”

“Oh, don’t be fooled by cheap imitators!” the king said. “I assure you, I can beat any price for a serious investor. I can make a wide assortment of gold items at a moment’s notice.”

“But …” Piper shook her head in confusion. “Your Majesty, you gave up the golden touch, didn’t you?”

The king looked astonished. “Gave it up?”

“Yes,” Piper said. “You got it from some god—”

“Dionysus,” the king agreed. “I’d rescued one of his satyrs, and in return, the god granted me one wish. I chose the golden touch.”

“But you accidentally turned your own daughter to gold,” Piper remembered. “And you realized how greedy you’d been. So you repented.”

“Repented!” King Midas looked at Lit incredulously. “You see, son? You’re away for a few thousand years, and the story gets twisted all around. My dear girl, did those stories ever say I’d lost my magic touch?”

“Well, I guess not. They just said you learned how to reverse it with running water, and you brought your daughter back to life.”

“That’s all true. Sometimes I still have to reverse my touch. There’s no running water in the house because I don’t want accidents”—he gestured to his statues— “but we chose to live next to a river just in case. Occasionally, I’ll forget and pat Lit on the back—”

Lit retreated a few steps. “I hate that.”

“I told you I was sorry, son. At any rate, gold is wonderful. Why would I give it up?”

“Well …” Piper looked truly lost now. “Isn’t that the point of the story? That you learned your lesson?”

Midas laughed. “My dear, may I see your backpack for a moment? Toss it here.”

Piper hesitated, but she wasn’t eager to offend the king. She dumped everything out of the pack and tossed it to Midas. As soon as he caught it, the pack turned to gold, like frost spreading across the fabric. It still looked flexible and soft, but definitely gold. The king tossed it back.

“As you see, I can still turn anything to gold,” Midas said. “That pack is magic now, as well. Go ahead—put your little storm spirit enemies in there.”

“Seriously?” Leo was suddenly interested.

He took the bag from Piper and held it up to the cage. As soon as he unzipped the backpack, the winds stirred and howled in protest. The cage bars shuddered. The door of the prison flew open and the winds got vacuumed straight into the pack.

Leo zipped it shut and grinned. “Gotta admit. That’s cool.”

“You see?” Midas said. “My golden touch a curse? Please. I didn’t learn any lesson, and life isn’t a story, girl. Honestly, my daughter Zoe was much more pleasant as a gold statue.”

“She talked a lot,” Lit offered.

“Exactly! And so I turned her back to gold.”

Midas pointed. There in the corner was a golden statue of a girl with a shocked expression, as if she were thinking, Dad!

“That’s horrible!” Piper said.

“Nonsense. She doesn’t mind. Besides, if I’d learned my lesson, would I have gotten these?” Midas pulled off his oversize sleeping cap, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or get sick.

Midas had long fuzzy gray ears sticking up from his white hair—like Bugs Bunny’s, but they weren’t rabbit ears. They were donkey ears.

“Oh, wow,” Leo said. “I didn’t need to see that.”

“Terrible, isn’t it?” Midas sighed. “A few years after the golden touch incident, I judged a music contest between Apollo and Pan, and I declared Pan the winner. Apollo, sore loser, said I must have the ears of an ass, and voilà. This was my reward for being truthful. I tried to keep them a secret. Only my barber knew, but he couldn’t help blabbing.” Midas pointed out another golden statue—a bald man in a toga, holding a pair of shears. “That’s him. He won’t be telling anyone’s secrets again.”

The king smiled. Suddenly he didn’t strike me as a harmless old man in a bathrobe. His eyes had a merry glow to them—the look of a madman who knew he was mad, accepted his madness, and enjoyed it.

“Yes, gold has many uses. I think that must be why I was brought back, eh Lit? To bankroll our patron.”

Lit nodded. “That and my good sword arm.”

I glanced at my friends. Suddenly the air in the room seemed much colder.

“So you do have a patron,” I said. “You work for the giants.”

King Midas waved his hand dismissively. “Well, I don’t care for giants myself, of course. But even supernatural armies need to get paid. I do owe my patron a great debt. I tried to explain that to the last group that came through, but they were very unfriendly. Wouldn’t cooperate at all.”

I slipped a hand into my pocket and grabbed the gold coin. “The last group?”

“Hunters,” Lit snarled. “Blasted girls from Artemis.”

I felt a spark of electricity travel down my spine. I’m pretty sure it melted some of the springs of the sofa. I couldn’t help it. My sister had been here.

“When?” I demanded. “What happened?”

Lit shrugged. “Few days ago? I didn’t get to kill them, unfortunately. They were looking for some evil wolves, or something. Said they were following a trail, heading west. Missing demigod—I don’t recall.”

Percy Jackson, I thought. Annabeth had mentioned the Hunters were looking for him. And in my dream of the burned-out house in the redwoods, I’d heard enemy wolves baying. Hera had called them her keepers. It had to be connected somehow.

Midas scratched his donkey ears. “Very unpleasant young ladies, those Hunters,” he recalled. “They absolutely refused to be turned into gold. Much of the security system outside I installed to keep that sort of thing from happening again, you know. I don’t have time for those who aren’t serious investors.”

I stood warily and looked at Leo and Piper. They got the message.

“Well,” Piper said, managing a smile. “It’s been a great visit. Welcome back to life. Thanks for the gold bag.”

“Oh, but you can’t leave!” Midas said. “I know you’re not serious investors, but that’s all right! I have to rebuild my collection.”

Lit was smiling cruelly. The king rose, and Leo and Piper moved away from him.

“Don’t worry,” the king assured them. “You don’t have to be turned to gold. I give all my guests a choice—join my collection, or die at the hands of Lityerses. Really, it’s good either way.”

Piper tried to use her charmspeak. “Your Majesty, you can’t—”

Quicker than any old man should’ve been able to move, Midas lashed out and grabbed her wrist.

“No!” I yelled. But a frost of gold spread over Piper, and in a heartbeat she was a glittering statue.

Leo tried to summon fire, but he’d forgotten his power wasn’t working. Midas touched his hand, and Leo transformed into solid metal.

I was so horrified I couldn’t move. They were just gone. And I hadn’t been able to stop it.

Midas smiled apologetically. “Gold trumps fire, I’m afraid.” He waved around him at all the gold curtains and furniture. “In this room, my power dampens all others: fire… even charmspeak. Which leaves me only one more trophy to collect.”

“Hedge!” I yelled. “Need help in here!”

For once, the satyr didn’t charge in. I wondered if the lasers had gotten him, or if he was sitting at the bottom of a trap pit.

Midas chuckled. “No goat to the rescue? Sad. But don’t worry, my boy. It’s really not painful. Lit can tell you.”

I fixed on an idea. “I choose combat. You said I could choose to fight Lit instead.”

Midas looked mildly disappointed, but he shrugged. “I said you could die fighting Lit. But of course, if you wish.”

The king backed away, and Lit raised his sword.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” Lit said. “I am the Reaper of Men!”

“Come on, Cornhusker.” I summoned my own weapon. This time it came up as a javelin, and I was glad for the extra length.

“Oh, gold weapon!” Midas said. “Very nice.”

Lit charged.

The guy was fast. He slashed and sliced, and I could barely dodge the strikes, but my mind went into a different mode—analyzing patterns, learning Lit’s style, which was all offense, no defense. I countered, sidestepped, and blocked. Lit seemed surprised to find me still alive.

“What is that style?” Lit growled. “You don’t fight like a Greek.”

“Legion training,” My instincts answered. “It’s Roman.”

“Roman?” Lit struck again, and I deflected his blade. “What is Roman?”

“News flash,” I said. “While you were dead, Rome defeated Greece. Created the greatest empire of all time.”

“Impossible,” Lit said. “Never even heard of them.”

I spun on one heel, smacked Lit in the chest with the butt of my javelin, and sent him toppling into Midas’s throne.

“Oh, dear,” Midas said. “Lit?”

“I’m fine,” Lit growled.

“You’d better help him up,” I said.

Lit cried, “Dad, no!”

Too late. Midas put his hand on his son’s shoulder, and suddenly a very angry-looking gold statue was sitting on Midas’s throne.

“Curses!” Midas wailed. “That was a naughty trick, demigod. I’ll get you for that.” He patted Lit’s golden shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. I’ll get you down to the river right after I collect this prize.”

Midas raced forward. I dodged, but the old man was fast, too. I kicked the coffee table into the old man’s legs and knocked him over, but Midas wouldn’t stay down for long.

Then Jason glanced at Leo and Piper’s golden statues. Anger washed over me. I was the son of Jupiter. I could not fail my friends.

I felt a tugging sensation in my gut, and the air pressure dropped so rapidly that my ears popped. Midas must’ve felt it too, because he stumbled to his feet and grabbed his donkey ears.

“Ow! What are you doing?” he demanded. “My power is supreme here!”

Thunder rumbled. Outside, the sky turned black.

“You know another good use for gold?” I said.

Midas raised his eyebrows, suddenly excited. “Yes?”

“It’s an excellent conductor of electricity.”

I raised my javelin, and the ceiling exploded. A lightning bolt ripped through the roof like it was an eggshell, connected with the tip of my spear, and sent out arcs of energy that blasted the sofas to shreds. Chunks of ceiling plaster crashed down. The chandelier groaned and snapped off its chain, and Midas screamed as it pinned him to the floor. The glass immediately turned into gold.

When the rumbling stopped, freezing rain poured into the building. Midas cursed in Ancient Greek, thoroughly pinned under his chandelier. The rain soaked everything, turning the gold chandelier back to glass. Piper and Leo were slowly changing too, along with the other statues in the room.

Then the front door burst open, and Coach Hedge charged in, club ready. His mouth was covered with dirt, snow, and grass.

“What’d I miss?” he asked.

“Where were you?” I demanded. Besides the headache, now my head was spinning from summoning the lightning bolt, and it was all I could do to keep from passing out. “I was screaming for help.”

Hedge belched. “Getting a snack. Sorry. Who needs killing?”

“No one, now!” I yelled. “Just grab Leo. I’ll get Piper.”

“Don’t leave me like this!” Midas wailed. All around him the statues of his victims were turning to flesh—his daughter, his barber, and a whole lot of angry-looking guys with swords.

I grabbed Piper’s golden bag and my own supplies. Then I threw a rug over the golden statue of Lit on the throne. Hopefully, that would keep the Reaper of Men from turning back to flesh—at least until after Midas’s victims did.

“Let’s get out of here,” I told Hedge. “I think these guys will want some quality time with Midas.”


	13. Train your dogs in latin

Piper woke up after hours of me and Leo worrying.

“He turned me to gold!”

“You’re okay now.” I leaned over and tucked a warm blanket around her, trying not to let her see how worried I’d been. She was very pale, and her lips were still purple.

We had installed ourselves in a cave, after un-goldifying Leo and Piper. Leo had made a campfire, that now blazed to keep out the cold. The firelight flickered against the rock walls. Unfortunately, the cave was shallow, so it didn’t offer much protection. Outside, the wind howled. Snow blew sideways. It was still nighttime, but it might as well have been day. The storm made it too dark to tell.

“L-L-Leo?” Piper managed.

“Present and un-gold-ified.”

Leo was also wrapped in blankets. He didn’t look great, but better than Piper had been.

“I got the precious metal treatment too,” he said. “But I came out of it faster. Dunno why. We had to dunk you in the river to get you back completely. Tried to dry you off, but … it’s really, really cold.”

“You’ve got hypothermia,” I sighed. I had almost freaked out for a moment. Piper hadn’t been reacting to the water, and Leo had, but ever so slowly. For a second there, I’d been convinced that they weren’t going to make it. “We risked as much nectar as we could. Coach Hedge did a little nature magic—”

“Sports medicine.” The coach loomed over Piper. “Kind of a hobby of mine. Your breath might smell like wild mushrooms and Gatorade for a few days, but it’ll pass. You probably won’t die. Probably.”

“Thanks,” Piper said weakly. “How did you beat Midas?”

I told her the story, putting most of it down to luck.

The coach snorted. “Kid’s being modest. You should’ve seen him. Hi-yah! Slice! Boom with the lightning!”

“Coach, you didn’t even see it,” I said. “You were outside eating the lawn.”

Okay, maybe I was still a bit bitter about it. I couldn’t remember being this scared in a long time. But then again, I couldn’t remember pretty much anything, which made me even angrier.

Coach was just warming up. “Then I came in with my club, and we dominated that room. Afterward, I told him, ‘Kid, I’m proud of you! If you could just work on your upper body strength—’”

“Coach,” I sad.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up, please.”

“Sure.” The coach sat down at the fire and started chewing his cudgel. I breathed. Now that it was a bit safer to assume that Piper wasn’t going to die on us, I needed a bit of silence.

I checked Piper’s temperature. She was still too cold.

“Leo, can you stoke the fire?” I asked.

“On it.” Leo summoned a baseball-sized clump of flames and lobbed it into the campfire.

“Do I look that bad?” Piper shivered.

“Nah,” I lied.

“You’re a terrible liar,” she said. “Where are we?”

“Pikes Peak,” I said. “Colorado.”

“But that’s, what—five hundred miles from Omaha?”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “I harnessed the storm spirits to bring us this far. They didn’t like it—went a little faster than I wanted, almost crashed us into the mountainside before I could get them back in the bag. I’m not going to be trying that again.”

“Why are we here?”

Leo sniffed. “That’s what I asked him.”

I gazed into the storm, but there was still nothing.

“That glittery wind trail we saw yesterday? It was still in the sky, though it had faded a lot. I followed it until I couldn’t see it anymore. Then—honestly, I’m not sure. I just felt like this was the right place to stop.”

I’d been very tired, and I still was. Harnessing the spirits while carrying almost-gold Piper, unconscious Leo and the screaming Coach was going to give me nightmares for weeks. I was not looking forward to sleeping. But this had felt like our destination, even though it was an awful place. I hoped my gut knew more than I did.

“’Course it is.” Coach Hedge spit out some cudgel splinters. “Aeolus’s floating palace should be anchored above us, right at the peak. This is one of his favorite spots to dock.”

“Maybe that was it.” I frowned. “I don’t know. Something else, too …”

“The Hunters were heading west,” Piper remembered. “Do you think they’re around here?”

The thought of my sister made my tattoo itch. I rubbed my forearm, not looking at Piper. I wasn’t sure I wanted anybody to know just how much I wanted to see Thalia.

“I don’t see how anyone could survive on the mountain right now. The storm’s pretty bad. It’s already the evening before the solstice, but we didn’t have much choice except to wait out the storm here. We had to give you some time to rest before we tried moving.”

Piper shivered. The little tension that had left me when she’d woken up returned.

“We have to get you warm.” I sat next to her and held out my arms, feeling completely awkward. “Uh, you mind if I …”

“I suppose.”

I put my arms around Piper, and we scooted closer to the fire. Coach Hedge chewed on his club and spit splinters into the fire. Leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet.

“So, guys, long as you’re cuddled up for story time … something I’ve been meaning to tell you. On the way to Omaha, I had this dream. Kinda hard to understand with the static and the Wheel of Fortune breaking in—”

“Wheel of Fortune?” asked Piper. It sounded like Leo was kidding, but when he looked up from his burgers, his expression was deadly serious.

“The thing is,” he said, “my dad Hephaestus talked to me. He said that Zeus got mad at the demigods after the Titan War, because the gods felt disrespected by then. They only won the war because the demigods took the lead and made a better plan, so they decided to close off. The problem is, there’s big problems coming, and if Zeus keeps being a jerk, we’ll all die.”

For some reason, the fact that my father had reacted like that didn’t seem surprising at all. My instincts all agreed that Jupiter had never, ever contacted me. Closing off Olympus was completely in character.

“According to my dad,” Leo continued, “History’s probably repeating. The giants are a different breed from the titans. Apparently, in the beginning, everything in creation came from the same parents—Gaea and Ouranos, Earth and Sky. They had their different batches of children— Titans and others that I don’t remember. Then Kronos, chopped up Ouranos and took over the world. Then the gods came along, children of the Titans, and defeated them. But that wasn’t the end of it. The earth bore a new batch of children, except they were sired by Tartarus, the spirit of the eternal abyss —the darkest, most evil place in the Underworld. Those children, the giants, were bred for one purpose—revenge on the for the fall of the Titans. They rose up to destroy Olympus, and they almost did it.”

Leo made a pause. The wind howled around us.

“What Hera is doing is supposed to, somehow, unite demigods. That’s the only way of convincing Zeus to accept our help, and win the war. My father said-” his voice shook a little bit. “He said that the mistress of the giants is much worse than them, but I’m not sure I know who he was talking about. And he said… he said I’d lose some friends along the way.”

As usual, Piper was the first to speak.

“I don’t understand. If demigods and gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would the gods stay silent? If they need us—”

“Ha,” said Coach Hedge. “The gods hate needing humans. They like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before Zeus admits he made a mistake closing Olympus.”

“Coach,” Piper said, “that was almost an intelligent comment.”

Hedge huffed. “What? I’m intelligent! I’m not surprised you cupcakes haven’t heard of the Giant War. The gods don’t like to talk about it. Bad PR to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. That’s just embarrassing.”

“There’s more, though,” I said. “When I dreamed about Juno in her cage, she said Jupiter was acting unusually paranoid. And Juno—she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. What if someone’s influencing the gods, like Medea influenced us?”

Piper shuddered. Leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast.

“Yeah, Hephaestus said something similar, like Zeus was acting weirder than usual. But what bothered me was the stuff my dad didn’t say. Like a couple of times he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. I don’t know. He acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible—like Hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret Hephaestus wasn’t supposed to tell me.”

I shifted. My instincts were going crazy again, and I did not like it one bit.

“Chiron was the same way back at camp,” I said. “He mentioned a sacred oath not to discuss—something. Coach, you know anything about that?”

“Nah. I’m just a satyr. They don’t tell us the juicy stuff. Especially an old—” He stopped himself.

“An old guy like you?” Piper asked. “But you’re not that old, are you?”

“Hundred and six,” the coach muttered.

Leo coughed. “Say what?”

“Don’t catch your panties on fire, Valdez. That’s just fifty-three in human years. Still, yeah, I made some enemies on the Council of Cloven Elders. I’ve been a protector a longtime. But they started saying I was getting unpredictable. Too violent. Can you imagine?”

“Wow.” Piper said. I tried my best not to look at Leo. “That’s hard to believe.”

Coach scowled. “Yeah, then finally we get a good war going with the Titans, and do they put me on the front lines? No! They send me as far away as possible—the Canadian frontier, can you believe it? Then after the war, they put me out to pasture. The Wilderness School. Bah! Like I’m too old to be helpful just because I like playing offense. All those flower-pickers on the Council—talking about nature.”

“I thought satyrs liked nature,” Piper ventured.

“Shoot, I love nature,” Hedge said. “Nature means big things killing and eating little things! And when you’re a —you know—vertically challenged satyr like me, you get in good shape, you carry a big stick, and you don’t take nothing from no one! That’s nature.” Hedge snorted indignantly. “Flowerpickers. Anyway, I hope you got something vegetarian cooking, Valdez. I don’t do flesh.”

“Yeah, Coach. Don’t eat your cudgel. I got some tofu patties here. Piper’s a vegetarian too. I’ll throw them on in a second.”

The smell of frying burgers filled the air. A few minutes later, Leo handed out the food.

Piper tensed in her place.

“We need to talk.” She sat up, facing us all. “I don’t want to hide anything from you guys anymore.”

I swallowed a bite of burger. Okay. So we were still having serious conversations.

“Three nights before the Grand Canyon trip,” Piper said, “I had a dream vision—a giant, telling me my father had been taken hostage. He told me I had to cooperate, or my dad would be killed.”

The flames crackled. I tried to remember all the times Piper had acted strange, for any hints of that.

Finally I remembered something.

“Enceladus? You mentioned that name before.”

Coach Hedge whistled. “Big giant. Breathes fire. Not somebody I’d want barbecuing my daddy goat.”

I gave him a _shut up_ look. “Piper, go on. What happened next?”

“I—I tried to reach my dad, but all I got was his personal assistant, and she told me not to worry.”

“Jane?” Leo remembered. “Didn’t Medea say something about controlling her?”

Piper nodded. “To get my dad back, I had to sabotage this quest. I didn’t realize it would be the three of us. Then after we started the quest, Enceladus sent me another warning: He told me he wanted you two dead. He wants me to lead you to a mountain. I don’t know exactly which one, but it’s in the Bay Area—I could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the summit. I have to be there by noon on the solstice, tomorrow. An exchange.”

She looked down at the ground. She looked so scared, like she thought we were going to yell at her, or kick her out into the snowstorm.

We couldn’t have that. I scooted next to her and hugged her as best as I could with a burger in one hand. “God, Piper. I’m so sorry.”

Leo nodded. “No kidding. You’ve been carrying this around for a week? Piper, we could help you.”

She glared at us. “Why don’t you yell at me or something? I was ordered to kill you!”

“Aw, come on,” I said. “You’ve saved us both on this quest. I’d put my life in your hands any day.”

“Same,” Leo said. “Can I have a hug too?”

I let go of Piper, and Leo sat at her other side. He put an arm around her, but she was still not having it.

“You don’t get it!” Piper said. “I’ve probably just killed my dad, telling you this.”

“I doubt it.” Coach Hedge belched. He was eating his tofu burger folded inside the paper plate, chewing it all like a taco. “Giant hasn’t gotten what he wants yet, so he still needs your dad for leverage. He’ll wait until the deadline passes, see if you show up. He wants you to divert the quest to this mountain, right?”

Piper nodded uncertainly.

“So that means Hera is being kept somewhere else,” Hedge reasoned. “And she has to be saved by the same day. So you have to choose—rescue your dad, or rescue Hera. If you go after Hera, then Enceladus takes care of your dad. Besides, Enceladus would never let you go even if you cooperated. You’re obviously one of the seven in the Great Prophecy.”

“So we have no choice,” Piper said miserably. “We have to save Hera, or the giant king gets unleashed. That’s our quest. The world depends on it. And Enceladus seems to have ways of watching me. He isn’t stupid. He’ll know if we change course and go the wrong way. He’ll kill my dad.”

“He’s not going to kill your dad,” Leo said. “We’ll save him.”

“We don’t have time!” Piper cried. “Besides, it’s a trap.”

“We’re your friends, beauty queen,” Leo said. “We’re not going to let your dad die. We just gotta figure out a plan.”

Coach Hedge grumbled. “Would help if we knew where this mountain was. Maybe Aeolus can tell you that. The Bay Area has a bad reputation for demigods. Old home of the Titans, Mount Othrys, sits over Mount Tam, where Atlas holds up the sky. I hope that’s not the mountain you saw.”

“I don’t think so. This was inland.”

Something in Coach Hedge’s words felt completely wrong. My brain was jumping and screaming, telling me that it was somethin important.

“Bad reputation … that doesn’t seem right. The Bay Area …”

“You think you’ve been there?” Piper asked.

“I …” I hadn’t realized I had spoken out loud. The memory was there, but not quite. It was my own age, right in front of me, but never showing. It was my best friend’s face, laughing and frowning but still completely dark. It was there, but it also wasn’t.

I felt myself losing my grip on the memory.

“I don’t know. Hedge, what happened to Mount Othrys?”

Hedge took another bite of paper and burger. “Well, Kronos built a new palace there last summer. Big nasty place, was going to be the headquarters for his new kingdom and all. Weren’t any battles there, though. Kronos marched on Manhattan, tried to take Olympus. If I remember right, he left some other Titans in charge of his palace, but after Kronos got defeated in Manhattan, the whole palace just crumbled on its own.”

“No,” I said. Fact. Memory. I saw a black throne, and lightning crackling around me. I saw a brown braid before me, and heard steps and screams.

Everyone was looking at me.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Leo asked.

“That’s not what happened. I—” I turned to the cave entrance. “Did you hear that?”

Howls pierced the night.

“Wolves,” Piper said. “They sound close.”

I jumped to my feet and summoned my spear. Leo and Coach Hedge got to their feet too. Piper tried, but she was still too weak.

“Stay there,” I told her. “We’ll protect you.”

Piper gritted her teeth. I knew she had to hate being helpless, but there was really nothing we could do at the moment.

Just outside the firelight at the entrance of the cave, I saw a pair of red eyes glowing in dark. More wolves edged into the light—black beasts bigger than Great Danes, with ice and snow caked on their fur. Their fangs gleamed, and their glowing red eyes looked disturbingly intelligent. The wolf in front was almost as tall as a horse, his mouth stained as if he’d just made a fresh kill.

Piper pulled her dagger out of its sheath.

My instincts took over, as usual. I stepped forward.

“ _In nomine Roma, secede, ut alioquin interficiemus vos._ ”

The alpha wolf curled his lip. The fur stood up along his spine. One of his lieutenants tried to advance, but the alpha wolf snapped at his ear. Then all of the wolves backed into the dark.

“Dude, I gotta study Latin.” Leo’s hammer shook in his hand. “What’d you say, Jason?”

Hedge cursed. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough. Look.”

The wolves were coming back, but the alpha wolf wasn’t with them. They didn’t attack. They waited—at least a dozen now, in a rough semicircle just outside the firelight, blocking the cave exit.

The coach hefted his club. “Here’s the plan. I’ll kill them all, and you guys escape.”

“Coach, they’ll rip you apart,” Piper said. “Nah, I’m good.”

I saw the silhouette of a man coming through the storm, wading through the wolf pack.

“Stick together,” I said. “They respect a pack. And Hedge, no crazy stuff. We’re not leaving you or anyone else behind.”

The wolves parted, and the man stepped into the firelight. His hair was greasy and ragged, the color of fireplace soot, topped with a crown of what looked like finger bones. His robes were tattered fur—wolf, rabbit, raccoon, deer, and several others I couldn’t identify. The furs didn’t look cured, and from the smell, they weren’t very fresh. His frame was lithe and muscular, like a distance runner’s. But the most horrible thing was his face. His thin pale skin was pulled tight over his skull. His teeth were sharpened like fangs. His eyes glowed bright red like his wolves’—and they fixed on me with absolute hatred.

“ _Ecce_ ,” he said, “ _filli Romani_.”

“Speak English, wolf man!” Hedge bellowed.

The wolf man snarled. “Tell your faun to mind his tongue, son of Rome. Or he’ll be my first snack.”

I stayed silent. The wolf man studied our little group. His nostrils twitched.

“So it’s true,” he mused. “A child of Aphrodite. A son of Hephaestus. A faun. And a child of Rome, of Lord Jupiter, no less. All together, without killing each other. How interesting.”

“You were told about us?” I asked. “By whom?”

The man snarled—perhaps a laugh, perhaps a challenge. “Oh, we’ve been patrolling for you all across the west, demigod, hoping we’d be the first to find you. The giant king will reward me well when he rises. I am Lycaon, king of the wolves. And my pack is hungry.”

The wolves snarled in the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Leo put up his hammer and slip something else from his tool belt—a glass bottle full of clear liquid.

Lycaon glared at my spear. He moved to each side as if looking for an opening, but the weapon moved with me.

“Leave,” I ordered. I had no idea where I was getting this wolf authority from, but it felt as familiar as my own name. “There’s no food for you here.”

“Unless you want tofu burgers,” Leo offered.

Lycaon bared his fangs. Apparently he wasn’t a tofu fan.

“If I had my way,” Lycaon said with regret, “I’d kill you first, son of Jupiter. Your father made me what I am. I was the powerful mortal king of Arcadia, with fifty fine sons, and Zeus slew them all with his lightning bolts.”

“Ha,” Coach Hedge said. “For good reason!”

I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Coach, you know this clown?”

“I do,” Piper answered. “Lycaon invited Zeus to dinner,” she said. “But the king wasn’t sure it was really Zeus. So to test his powers, Lycaon tried to feed him human flesh. Zeus got outraged—”

“And killed my sons!” Lycaon howled. The wolves behind him howled too.

“So Zeus turned him into a wolf,” Piper said. “They call… they call werewolves lycanthropes, named after him, the first werewolf.”

“The king of wolves,” Coach Hedge finished. “An immortal, smelly, vicious mutt.”

Lycaon growled. “I will tear you apart, faun!”

“Oh, you want some goat, buddy? ’Cause I’ll give you goat.”

“Stop it,” I said. “Lycaon, you said you wanted to kill me first, but...?”

“Sadly, Child of Rome, you are spoken for. Since this one”—he waggled his claws at Piper— “has failed to kill you, you are to be delivered alive to the Wolf House. One of my compatriots has asked for the honor of killing you herself.”

“Who?”

The wolf king snickered. “Oh, a great admirer of yours. Apparently, you made quite an impression on her. She will take care of you soon enough, and really I cannot complain. Spilling your blood at the Wolf House should mark my new territory quite well. Lupa will think twice about challenging my pack.”

His words sent a chill through my spine. Killing me in the Wolf House– I knew that it would be catastrophic.

“You’re going to leave now,” Piper said, “before we destroy you.”

She tried to put power into the words, but she was too weak. Shivering in her blankets, pale and sweaty and barely able to hold a knife, she didn’t look very threatening.

Lycaon’s red eyes crinkled with humor. “A brave try, girl. I admire that. Perhaps I’ll make your end quick. Only the son of Jupiter is needed alive. The rest of you, I’m afraid, are dinner.”

Piper stood up. I guess she wanted to die on her feet. Because that’s how things looked like right now.

I took a step forward. This was our last chance. “You’re not killing anyone, wolf man. Not without going through me.”

Lycaon howled and extended his claws. I slashed at him, but the spear passed straight through as if the wolf king wasn’t there. Lycaon laughed.

“Gold, bronze, steel—none of these are any good against my wolves, son of Jupiter.”

“Silver!” Piper cried. “Aren’t werewolves hurt by silver?”

“We don’t have any silver!” I said.

Wolves leaped into the firelight. Hedge charged forward with an elated “Woot!”

But Leo struck first. He threw his glass bottle and it shattered on the ground, splattering liquid all over the wolves—the unmistakable smell of gasoline. He shot a burst of fire at the puddle, and a wall of flames erupted. Wolves yelped and retreated. Several caught fire and had to run back into the snow. Even Lycaon looked uneasily at the barrier of flames now separating his wolves from the demigods.

“Aw, c’mon,” Coach Hedge complained. “I can’t hit them if they’re way over there.”

Every time a wolf came closer, Leo shot a new wave of fire from his hands, but each effort seemed to make him a little more tired, and the gasoline was already dying down.

“I can’t summon any more gas!” Leo warned. Then his face turned red. “Wow, that came out wrong. I mean the burning kind. Gonna take the tool belt a while to recharge. What you got, man?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Not even a weapon that works.”

“Lightning?” Piper asked.

I concentrated, but nothing happened. “I think the snowstorm is interfering, or something.”

“Unleash the venti!” Piper said.

“Then we’ll have nothing to give Aeolus,” I said. “We’ll have come all this way for nothing.”

Lycaon laughed. “I can smell your fear. A few more minutes of life, heroes. Pray to whatever gods you wish. Zeus did not grant me mercy, and you will have none from me.”

The flames began to sputter out. I cursed and dropped the spear. I crouched. If I had to fight hand-to-hand, then so be it. Leo pulled his hammer out of his pack. Piper raised her dagger. Coach Hedge hefted his club, and he was the only one who looked excited about dying.

Then a ripping sound cut through the wind—like a piece of tearing cardboard. A long stick sprouted from the neck of the nearest wolf—the shaft of a silver arrow. The wolf writhed and fell, melting into a puddle of shadow.

More arrows. More wolves fell. The pack broke in confusion. An arrow flashed toward Lycaon, but the wolf king caught it in midair. Then he yelled in pain. When he dropped the arrow, it left a charred, smoking gash across his palm.

Another arrow caught him in the shoulder, and the wolf king staggered.

“Curse them!” Lycaon yelled. He growled at his pack, and the wolves turned and ran. Lycaon fixed me with his glowing red eyes. “This isn’t over, boy.”

The wolf king disappeared into the night. Seconds later, I heard more wolves baying, but the sound was different—less threatening, more like hunting dogs on the scent. A smaller white wolf burst into the cave, followed by two more.

Hedge said, “Kill it?”

“No!” Piper said. “Wait.”

The wolves tilted their heads and studied the campers with huge golden eyes. A heartbeat later, their masters appeared: a troop of hunters in white-and-gray winter camouflage, at least half a dozen. All of them carried bows, with quivers of glowing silver arrows on their backs. Their faces were covered with parka hoods, but clearly they were all girls.

My heart stopped in my chest. I knew who they were.

One of the girls, a little taller than the rest, crouched in the firelight and snatched up the arrow that had wounded Lycaon’s hand. “So close.”

Her voice struck a chord within me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could only look at her in silence, and try to keep breathing.

The girl turned to her companions. “Phoebe, stay with me. Watch the entrance. The rest of you, follow Lycaon. We can’t lose him now. I’ll catch up with you.”

The other hunters mumbled agreement and disappeared, heading after Lycaon’s pack. The girl in white turned toward us, her face still hidden in her parka hood. “We’ve been following that demon’s trail for over a week. Is everyone all right? No one got bit?”

I knew I was supposed to answer, but I couldn’t say a word. She was here, and it was like my brain had gotten one too many electric shocks, and refused to work.

“You’re her,” Piper said. “You’re Thalia.”

The girl tensed. I was afraid she might draw her bow, but instead she pulled down her parka hood.

Her hair was spiky black, with a silver tiara across her brow. Her face had a super-healthy glow to it, as if she were a little more than human, and her eyes were brilliant blue. Lightning cracked through my veins.

“Do I know you?” Thalia asked.

Piper took a breath. “This might be a shock, but—”

“Thalia.” I spoke almost automatically. I needed to talk to her. I needed her to be my sister. I needed not to be alone. I stepped forward, my voice breaking. “I’m Jason, your brother.”


	14. I finally talk to my sister

For a minute, we just faced each other. I observed every detail of her face, all my nerves crackling and saying yes, this is something that you know, this is someone that fits the gaps in your memory.

I could feel Thalia’s piercing blue eyes on me, and I knew that she was doing the same. I wondered how much she remembered about me. I would have asked, but then Thalia rushed forward and hugged me tightly. I was almost afraid to hug back. Would she want me? What if whoever I was wasn’t good for her?

But Thalia was euphoric, so much so that I could barely believe it.

“My gods!” she exclaimed. “She told me you were dead!”

She gripped my face with both hands, examining it. Her gloves were cold to the touch, still covered in snow. She was half a head shorter than me, strong and wiry. Her features reminded me of a hawk. I wanted to do something, say something; but I might as well have been one of the statues in Boreas’ palace. My brain was on overdrive: too much information, too overwhelming.

“Thank Artemis, it is you,” rambled Thalia. “That little scar on your lip—you tried to eat a stapler when you were two!”

Leo laughed. “Seriously?”

Hedge nodded like he approved of my taste. “Staplers —excellent source of iron.”

Their voices snapped something in me. My mind got back to work. I had questions.

“W-wait,” I stammered. The best I could do at that moment. “Who told you I was dead? What happened?”

At the cave entrance, one of the white wolves barked. Thalia looked back at the wolf and nodded, but she kept her hands on my face, like she was afraid I might vanish. I wasn’t going to complain. If she had let me go, I would have probably broken down.

“My wolf is telling me I don’t have much time, and she’s right,” said Thalia. “But we have to talk. Let’s sit.”

Piper did better than that. She collapsed. She would’ve cracked her head on the cave floor if Hedge hadn’t caught her.

Thalia rushed over. “What’s wrong with her? Ah—never mind. I see. Hypothermia. Ankle.” She frowned at the satyr. “Don’t you know nature healing?”

Hedge scoffed. “Why do you think she looks this good? Can’t you smell the Gatorade?”

Thalia looked at Leo, all business. “You and the satyr,” she ordered, “take this girl to my friend at the entrance. Phoebe’s an excellent healer.”

“It’s cold out there!” Hedge said. “I’ll freeze my horns off.”

Leo tapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, Hedge. These two need time to talk.”

“Humph. Fine,” the satyr muttered. “Didn’t even get to brain anybody.”

They carried Piper out of the cave, and Thalia and I were left alone.

We sat at the fire. Thalia didn’t say anything, and to be honest, I couldn’t speak either.

I kept looking at her, trying to put my thoughts in order. She was sitting next to me, our knees touching. One of my legs kept bouncing. My brain supported a bit of unhelpful advice: stop doing that. No weaknesses. I did my best to ignore it. This was my sister, not an enemy. It shouldn’t have to be like that.

My sister. I liked that expression. I was pretty sure I’d never had a sister before.

Thalia seemed more at ease than me, as if she was used to stumbling across stranger things than long-lost relatives. But still she regarded me in a kind of amazed trance, maybe remembering a little two-year-old who tried to eat a stapler. I hadn’t even noticed that scar, but she’d looked at it like irrefutable proof.

Finally I couldn’t stand the silence.

“Thalia … what happened to our family? Who told you I was dead?”

Thalia tugged at a silver bracelet on her wrist. In the firelight, in her winter camouflage, she almost looked like Khione the snow princes.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I woke up three days ago on a bus with Leo and Piper. That’s as far as I remember.”

Thalia’s eyes narrowed. I got the feeling that she was getting ready to fight somebody.

“It wasn’t their fault,” I explained. “Juno- sorry, Hera stole my memories.”

Thalia tensed. “Hera? How do you know that?”

I explained about the quest—the prophecy at camp, Hera getting imprisoned, the giant taking Piper’s dad, and the winter solstice deadline. Thalia was a good listener. Nothing seemed to surprise her—the monsters, the prophecies, the dead rising. But when I mentioned King Midas, she cursed in Ancient Greek.

“I knew we should’ve burned down his mansion,” she said. “That man’s a menace. But we were so intent on following Lycaon—Well, I’m glad you got away. So Hera’s been … what, hiding you all these years?”

“I’m not sure, but I have the feeling it’s more complicated. Still-” I brought out the photo from my pocket. “she left me just enough memory to recognize your face.”

Thalia looked at the picture, and her expression softened. “I’d forgotten about that. I left it in Cabin One, didn’t I?”

I nodded. “I think Hera wanted for us to meet. When we landed here, at this cave … I had a feeling it was important. Like I knew you were close by. Is that crazy?”

Thalia smiled.

“Jason,” she said, “when you’re dealing with the gods, nothing is too crazy. But you can’t trust Hera, especially since we’re children of Zeus. She hates all children of Zeus.”

When she said my name, it sounded like she knew me.

“But she said something about Zeus giving her my life as a peace offering,” I said. “Does that make any sense?”

The color drained from Thalia’s face. “Oh, gods. Mother wouldn’t have … You don’t remember—No, of course you don’t.”

“What?” I asked.

Thalia’s features seemed to grow older in the firelight, like her immortality wasn’t working so well.

“Jason … I’m not sure how to say this. Our mom wasn’t exactly stable. She caught Zeus’s eye because she was a television actress, and she was beautiful, but she didn’t handle the fame well. She drank, pulled stupid stunts. She was always in the tabloids. She could never get enough attention. Even before you were born, she and I argued all the time. She … she knew Dad was Zeus, and I think that was too much for her to take. It was like the ultimate achievement for her to attract the lord of the sky, and she couldn’t accept it when he left. The thing about the gods… well, they don’t hang around.”

It was cold already, but the feeling at the pit of my stomach was freezing. Thalia’s words explained so much, but that didn’t make it any better.

When I thought about my parents, all I could sense was an empty space; not because my memories of them had been stolen, but because there never had been any. I had thought it was because my father was the king of the gods, and the feeling just passed on to my mother’s memories. Turns out, it was a void on both counts.

I clenched my teeth to stop myself from crying. Was Lupa the only mom I’d had? Was it Thalia? Who had taken care of me when I was a baby?

It was the same question, over and over again. Had there ever been anyone who cared about me? Who had I loved before Juno took me away?

“So …” I couldn’t finish the question.

“Jason, you have friends now,” Thalia said. “You’ve got me. You’re not alone.”

I wondered, if all my feelings were that obvious, why did anyone ever trust me?

Thalia offered her hand, and I took it. Her fingers were cold, and the touch grounded me. I was here, now. I was talking to my sister. Whatever the past was, I couldn’t fix it.

“When I was about seven,” Thalia said, “Zeus started visiting Mom again. I think he felt bad about wrecking her life, and he seemed—different somehow. A little older and sterner, more fatherly toward me. For a while, Mom improved. She loved having Zeus around, bringing her presents, causing the sky to rumble. She always wanted more attention. That’s the year you were born. Mom … well, I never got along with her, but you gave me a reason to hang around. You were so cute. And I didn’t trust Mom to look after you.

Of course, Zeus eventually stopped coming by again. He probably couldn’t stand Mom’s demands anymore, always pestering him to let her visit Olympus, or to make her immortal or eternally beautiful. When he left for good, Mom got more and more unstable. That was about the time the monsters started attacking me. Mom blamed Hera. She claimed the goddess was coming after you too—that Hera had barely tolerated my birth, but two demigod children from the same family was too big an insult. Mom even said she hadn’t wanted to name you Jason, but Zeus insisted, as a way to appease Hera because the goddess liked that name. I didn’t know what to believe.”

“How did we get separated?” I asked. My voice was coarse. Thalia squeezed my hand.

“If I’d known you were alive … gods, things would’ve been so different. But when you were two, Mom packed us in the car for a family vacation. We drove up north, toward the wine country, to this park she wanted to show us. I remember thinking it was strange because Mom never took us anywhere, and she was acting super nervous. I was holding your hand, walking you toward this big building in the middle of the park, and …”

She took a shaky breath. “Mom told me to go back to the car and get the picnic basket. I didn’t want to leave you alone with her, but it was only for a few minutes. When I came back … Mom was kneeling on the stone steps, hugging herself and crying. She said—she said you were gone. She said Hera claimed you and you were as good as dead. I didn’t know what she’d done. I was afraid she’d completely lost her mind. I ran all over the place looking for you, but you’d just vanished. She had to drag me away, kicking and screaming. For the next few days I was hysterical. I don’t remember everything, but I called the police on Mom and they questioned her for a long time. Afterward, we fought. She told me I’d betrayed her, that I should support her, like she was the only one who mattered. Finally I couldn’t stand it. Your disappearance was the last straw. I ran away from home, and I never went back, not even when Mom died a few years ago. I thought you were gone forever. I never told anyone about you—not even Annabeth or Luke, my two best friends. It was just too painful.”

It was like I was drowning. I could hear Juno’s words inside my head, mixing with Thalia’s story.

_Would you attack your patron?_

_Hera claimed you and you were as good as dead._

_Long ago, your father gave me your life as a gift to placate my anger. He named you Jason, after my favorite mortal. You belong to me._

_I remember thinking it was strange because Mom never took us anywhere, and she was acting super nervous._

_Mom was kneeling on the stone steps, hugging herself and crying._

“Chiron knew.” I don’t know where I got the words from. “When I got to camp, he took one look at me and said, ‘You should be dead.’”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Thalia insisted. “I never told him.”

I wanted to insist, but Thalia seemed so sure, I let it go. She kept looking at me, like she still couldn’t believe that I was there.

“Look at you,” she whispered in awe. “You’re my age. You’ve grown up.”

“But where have I been?” I said, because if I didn’t voice it I would explode. “How could I be missing all that time? And the Roman stuff …”

Thalia frowned. “The Roman stuff?”

“I speaks Latin,” I said. “I call the gods by their Roman names, and I’ve got a weird tattoo.” I showed her the marks on my arm. SPQR, an eagle, twelve straight lines.

I gave Thalia the rundown about the other weird stuff that had happened: Boreas turning into Aquilon, Lycaon calling me a “child of Rome,” and the wolves backing off when I spoke Latin to them.

Thalia plucked her bowstring. “Latin. Zeus sometimes spoke Latin, the second time he stayed with Mom. Like I said, he seemed different, more formal.”

“You think he was in his Roman aspect?” I asked. “And that’s why I think of myself as a child of Jupiter?”

“Possibly,” Thalia said. “I’ve never heard of something like that happening, but it might explain why you think in Roman terms, why you can speak Latin rather than Ancient Greek. That would make you unique. Still, it doesn’t explain how you’ve survived without Camp Half-Blood. A child of Zeus, or Jupiter, or whatever you want to call him—you would’ve been hounded by monsters. If you were on your own, you should’ve died years ago. I know I wouldn’t have been able to survive without friends. You would’ve needed training, a safe haven—”

“I wasn’t alone,” I blurted out. Then I bit my tongue. I only had the shadows of one memory and a half, and I still wasn’t ready to share them with anyone. But Thalia had heard me.

“We’ve heard about others like me,” I managed.

Thalia furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

I told her about the slashed-up purple shirt in Medea’s department store, and the story the Cyclopes told about the child of Mercury who spoke Latin.

“Isn’t there anywhere else for demigods?” I asked. “I mean, besides Camp Half-Blood?”

“I’ve been all over the country,” Thalia mused. “I’ve never seen evidence of crazy Latin teachers, or demigods in purple shirts. Still …” Her voice trailed off, like she’d just had a troubling thought.

“What?” I asked.

Thalia shook her head. “I’ll have to talk to the goddess. Maybe Artemis will guide us.”

“She’s still talking to you?” I said. “Most of the gods have gone silent.”

“Artemis follows her own rules,” Thalia said. “She has to be careful not to let Zeus know, but she thinks Zeus is being ridiculous closing Olympus. She’s the one who set us on the trail of Lycaon. She said we’d find a lead to a missing friend of ours.”

“Percy Jackson,” I guessed. “Annabeth’s boyfriend.”

Thalia nodded, her face full of concern. I thought of Annabeth, scouring every inch of the country to get her boyfriend back. This guy had had tons of friends.

“So what would Lycaon have to do with him?” I asked. “And how does it connect to us?”

“We need to find out soon,” Thalia admitted. “If your deadline is tomorrow, we’re wasting time. Aeolus could tell you—”

The white wolf appeared again at the doorway and yipped insistently.

“I have to get moving.” Thalia stood. “Otherwise I’ll lose the other Hunters’ trail. First, though, I’ll take you to Aeolus’s palace.”

“If you can’t, it’s okay,” I said, though it would really be not okay at all.

“Oh, please.” Thalia smiled and helped me up. “I haven’t had a brother in years. I think I can stand a few minutes with you before you get annoying. Now, let’s go!”

The Hunter Phoebe had set up a silver tent pavilion thing right outside the cave. How she’d done it so fast, I had no idea, but inside was a kerosene heater keeping Leo, Piper and Hedge toasty warm and a bunch of comfy throw pillows.

Piper looked back to normal. She and Leo were decked out in new parkas, gloves, and camo pants like the Hunter. Phoebe, Hedge and the two of them were kicking back, drinking hot chocolate.

“Hiya, sparky siblings!” Leo said. “Welcome to the luxury tent!”

Phoebe sniffed.

“Boys,” she said, like it was the worst insult she could think of.

“It’s all right, Phoebe,” Thalia said. “I’ll get my brother an extra coat. And I think we can spare some chocolate.”

Phoebe grumbled, but soon I was also dressed in silvery winter clothes that were incredibly lightweight and warm. Blond and white as I was, I looked like an icicle. The hot chocolate was first-rate.

“Cheers!” said Coach Hedge. He crunched down his plastic thermos cup.

“That cannot be good for your intestines,” Leo said.

Thalia patted Piper on the back. “You up for moving?”

Piper nodded. “Thanks to Phoebe, yeah. You guys are really good at this wilderness survival thing. I feel like I could run ten miles.”

Thalia winked at me. “She’s tough for a child of Aphrodite. I like this one.”

“Hey, I could run ten miles too,” Leo volunteered. “Tough Hephaestus kid here. Let’s hit it.”

Thalia ignored him. I hoped Leo wasn’t getting a crush on her, because Thalia looked like she’d crush him if he ever got too annoying.

It took Phoebe exactly six seconds to break camp.

The tent self-collapsed into a square the size of a pack of chewing gum. Leo murmured something about asking her for the blueprints, but we didn’t have time.

Thalia ran uphill through the snow, hugging a tiny little path on the side of the mountain. I’m pretty sure Leo regretted trying to look tough, because the Hunters left him in the dust.

Coach Hedge leaped around like a happy mountain goat, coaxing on Leo and Piper like it was track day at school. “Come on, Valdez! Pick up the pace! Let’s chant. I’ve got a girl in Kalamazoo—”

“Let’s not,” Thalia snapped.

So we ran in silence. I stayed at the back of the group: it was a stupid task, because none of the Hunters were going to get too behind from the main group, but it gave me an excuse to gather my thoughts.

After a few minutes, Leo fell in next to me. “How you doing, man?”

I grimaced.

“Thalia takes it so calmly,” I said. “Like it’s no big deal that I appeared. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but … she’s not like me. She seems so much more together.”

“Hey, she’s not fighting amnesia,” Leo said. “Plus, she’s had more time to get used to this whole demigod thing. You fight monsters and talk to gods for a while, you probably get used to surprises.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Leo looked so concerned I told him the story. For once, he listened in silence. When I got to the part where Juno had stolen me, making Thalia run away, his eyes drifted to the front.

“I just want to understand what happened when I was two, why my mom got rid of me,” I said in the end. “Thalia ran away because of me.”

“Hey, whatever’s happened, it wasn’t your fault,” Leo said. It sounded like he really believed that. “And your sister is pretty cool. She’s a lot like you.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I’d known Thalia for about twenty minutes, but I wasn’t sure whether Leo was right or not.

We fell back into silence.

Finally, the Hunters stopped. Leo slammed into Thalia and nearly sent them both down the side of the mountain the hard way. Fortunately, my sister was light on her feet. She steadied them both, then pointed up.

“That,” Leo choked, “is a really large rock.”

We stood near the summit of Pikes Peak. Below us the world was blanketed in clouds. Next to me, Leo and Piper seemed to have trouble breathing. Night had set in, but a full moon shone and the stars were incredible. Stretching out to the north and south, peaks of other mountains rose from the clouds like islands—or teeth. But the real show was above us.

Hovering in the sky, about a quarter mile away, was a massive free-floating island of glowing purple stone. It was hard to judge its size, but I figured it was at least as wide as a football stadium and just as tall. The sides were rugged cliffs, riddled with caves, and every once in a while a gust of wind burst out with a sound like a pipe organ blast. At the top of the rock, brass walls ringed some kind of a fortress.

The only thing connecting Pikes Peak to the floating island was a narrow bridge of ice that glistened in the moonlight. Then I realized the bridge wasn’t exactly ice, because it wasn’t solid. As the winds changed direction, the bridge snaked around—blurring and thinning, in some places even breaking into a dotted line like the vapor trail of a plane.

“We’re not seriously crossing that,” Leo said.

Thalia shrugged. “I’m not a big fan of heights, I’ll admit. But if you want to get to Aeolus’s fortress, this is the only way.”

“Is the fortress always hanging there?” Piper asked. “How can people not notice it sitting on top of Pikes Peak?”

“The Mist,” Thalia said. “Still, mortals do notice it indirectly. Some days, Pikes Peak looks purple. People say it’s a trick of the light, but actually it’s the color of Aeolus’s palace, reflecting off the mountain face.”

“It’s enormous,” I said.

Thalia laughed. “You should see Olympus, Jay.”

“You’re serious? You’ve been there?”

Thalia grimaced as if it wasn’t a good memory. “We should go across in two different groups. The bridge is fragile.”

“That’s reassuring,” Leo said. “Jason, can’t you just fly us up there?”

Thalia laughed. Then she seemed to realize Leo’s question wasn’t a joke. “Wait … Jason, you can fly?”

I gazed up at the floating fortress. “Well, sort of. More like I can control the winds. But the winds up here are so strong, I’m not sure I’d want to try. Thalia, you mean … you can’t fly?”

For a second, Thalia looked genuinely afraid. Then she got her expression under control. She was a lot more scared of heights than she was letting on.

“Truthfully,” she said, “I’ve never tried. Might be better if we stuck to the bridge.”

Coach Hedge tapped the ice vapor trail with his hoof, then jumped onto the bridge. Amazingly, it held his weight.

“Easy! I’ll go first. Piper, come on, girl. I’ll give you a hand.”

“No, that’s okay,” Piper started to say, but the coach grabbed her hand and dragged her up the bridge. When they were about halfway, the bridge still seemed to be holding them just fine.

Thalia turned to her Hunter friend. “Phoebe, I’ll be back soon. Go find the others. Tell them I’m on my way.”

“You sure?” Phoebe narrowed her eyes at Leo and me, like we might kidnap Thalia or something.

“It’s fine,” Thalia promised.

Phoebe nodded reluctantly, then raced down the mountain path, the white wolves at her heels.

“Jason, Leo, just be careful where you step,” Thalia said. “It hardly ever breaks.”

“It hasn’t met me yet,” Leo muttered.

Halfway up, things went wrong.

Piper and Hedge had already made it safely to the top and were waving at us, encouraging them to keep climbing, and I guess Leo got distracted. He stopped in his tracks.

“Why do they have a bridge?” he asked.

Thalia frowned. “Leo, this isn’t a good place to stop. What do you mean?”

“They’re wind spirits,” Leo said. “Can’t they fly?”

“Yes, but sometimes they need a way to connect to the world below.”

“So the bridge isn’t always here?” Leo asked.

Thalia shook her head. “The wind spirits don’t like to anchor to the earth, but sometimes it’s necessary. Like now. They know you’re coming.”

Leo looked dazed in thought. Rivulets of smoke came out of his hands. Then the ice on the bridge started melting.

“Leo?” I said. “What are you thinking?”

“Oh, gods,” Thalia said. “Keep moving. Look at your feet.”

Leo shuffled backward, just realizing that he was literally on fire. His pants steamed in the cold air. His shoes were literally smoking, and the bridge didn’t like it. The ice was thinning.

“Leo, stop it,” I warned. “You’re going to melt it.”

“I’ll try,” Leo said. But I don’t think he could. “Listen, Jason, what did Hera call you in that dream? She called you a bridge.”

“Leo, seriously, cool down,” Thalia said. “I don’t what you’re talking about, but the bridge is—”

“Just listen,” Leo insisted. “If Jason is a bridge, what’s he connecting? Maybe two different places that normally don’t get along—like the air palace and the ground. You had to be somewhere before this, right? And Hera said you were an exchange.”

“An exchange.” Thalia’s eyes widened. “Oh, gods.”

I frowned. “What are you two talking about?”

Thalia murmured something like a prayer. “I understand now why Artemis sent me here. Jason—she told me to hunt for Lycaon and I would find a clue about Percy. You are the clue. Artemis wanted us to meet so I could hear your story.”

“I don’t understand,” I protested. “I don’t have a story. I don’t remember anything.”

“But Leo’s right,” Thalia said. “It’s all connected. If we just knew where—”

Leo snapped his fingers. “Jason, what did you call that place in your dream? That ruined house. The Wolf House?”

Thalia nearly choked. “The Wolf House? Jason, why didn’t you tell me that! That’s where they’re keeping Hera?”

“You know where it is?” I asked.

Then the bridge dissolved.

I grabbed Leo by the coat, and we landed safely on one of the sides. The two of us scrambled up the bridge, and when we turned, Thalia was on the other side of a thirty-foot chasm. The bridge was continuing to melt.

“Go!” Thalia shouted, backing down the bridge as it crumbled. “Find out where the giant is keeping Piper’s dad. Save him! I’ll take the Hunters to the Wolf House and hold it until you can get there. We can do both!”

“But where is the Wolf House?” I shouted.

“You know where it is, Jason!” She was so far away now that we could barely hear her voice over the wind. I was pretty sure she said: “I’ll see you there. I promise.”

Then she turned and raced down the dissolving bridge. Leo and I had no time to stand around. We climbed for their lives, the ice vapor thinning under our feet. Several times, I grabbed Leo and used the winds to keep us aloft, but it was more like bungee jumping than flying.

When we reached the floating island, Piper and Coach Hedge pulled us aboard just as the last of the vapor bridge vanished.

We stood gasping for breath at the base of a stone stairway chiseled into the side of the cliff, leading up to the fortress. I looked back down. The top of Pikes Peak floated below them in a sea of clouds, but there was no sign of Thalia. My heart sunk.

“What happened?” Piper demanded. “Leo, why are your clothes smoking?”

“I got a little heated,” he gasped. “Sorry, Jason. Honest. I didn’t—”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Really. Now, we’ve got less than twenty-four hours to rescue a goddess and Piper’s dad. Let’s go see the king of the winds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at that, I'm alive! Sorry for the delay. Just saying, I'm going to be studying for finals until the 25th of June at least (the day after the feast of Fortuna, will you look at that!), so if I disappear for a couple of days, the reason is an exam. Jason and company will still keep popping up on here, though, don't worry!


	15. Road trip to a TV station

I had found my sister and lost her in less than an hour.

As we climbed the cliffs of the floating island, I kept looking back, but Thalia was really gone. And despite what she’d said about meeting again, I had my doubts.

She’d found a new family with the Hunters, and a new mother in Artemis. She seemed so confident and comfortable with her life, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be part of it. And she seemed so set on finding her friend Percy. Had she ever searched for me that way? Not fair, I thought. She thought I was dead.

I could barely tolerate what she’d said about our mom. It was almost like Thalia had handed me a baby—a really loud, ugly baby—and said, _Here, this is yours. Carry it_. I didn’t want to carry it. I didn’t want to look at it or claim it. I didn’t want to know that I had an unstable mother who’d gotten rid of me to appease a goddess. No wonder Thalia had run away. And not exactly the kind of thing I wanted to learn about myself. Seriously, was there anything about me that wasn’t either depressing or dangerous to everyone?

Of course, that’s when I remembered the Zeus cabin at Camp Half-Blood—that tiny little alcove Thalia had used as a bunk, out of sight from the glowering statue of the sky god. Our dad wasn’t much of a bargain, either.

I understood why Thalia had renounced that part of her life too, but I was still pissed. I couldn’t be so lucky. I was left holding the bag —literally. The golden backpack of winds was strapped over my shoulders. The closer we got to Aeolus’s palace, the heavier the bag got. The winds struggled, rumbling and bumping around.

The only one who seemed in a good mood was Coach Hedge. He kept bounding up the slippery staircase and trotting back down. “Come on, cupcakes! Only a few thousand more steps!”

As we climbed, Leo and Piper left me to glower in silence. Maybe they could sense that I wasn’t in the mood to talk. Piper kept glancing back, worried, as if I was the one who’d almost died of hypothermia rather than she. Or maybe she was thinking about Thalia’s idea. We’d told her what Thalia had said on the bridge—how we could save both her dad and Hera—but I didn’t really understand how they were going to do that, and I wasn’t sure if the possibility had made Piper more hopeful or just more anxious.

Leo kept swatting his own legs, checking for signs that his pants were on fire. He wasn’t steaming anymore, but the incident on the ice bridge had really freaked me out. Leo hadn’t seemed to realize that he had smoke coming out his ears and flames dancing through his hair. If Leo started spontaneously combusting every time he got excited, we were going to have a tough time taking him anywhere. I imagined trying to get food at a restaurant. _I’ll have a cheeseburger and—Ahhh! My friend’s on fire! Get me a bucket!_

Mostly, though, I didn’t like what Leo had said. I didn’t want to be a bridge, or an exchange, or anything else. I just wanted to know where I came from. If possible, with the side effect of people who had actually cared about me in recent times.

And Thalia had looked so unnerved when Leo mentioned the burned-out house in my dreams—the place Lupa had said was my starting point. How did Thalia know that place, and why did she assume I could find it? The answer seemed close. But the nearer I got to it, the less it cooperated, like the winds on my back. I was going to give myself a permanent headache with this whole mess. Juno better have some health insurance to cover for it.

Finally we arrived at the top of the island. Bronze walls marched all the way around the fortress grounds, though I couldn’t imagine who would possibly attack this place. Twenty-foot-high gates opened for us, and a road of polished purple stone led up to the main citadel—a white-columned rotunda, Greek style, like one of the monuments in Washington, D.C.—except for the cluster of satellite dishes and radio towers on the roof.

“That’s bizarre,” Piper said.

“Guess you can’t get cable on a floating island,” Leo said. “Dang, check this guy’s front yard.”

The rotunda sat in the center of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds were amazing in a scary way. They were divided into four sections like big pizza slices, each one representing a season. The section on the right was an icy waste, with bare trees and a frozen lake. Snowmen rolled across the landscape as the wind blew, so I wasn’t sure if they were decorations or alive. To our left was an autumn park with gold and red trees. Mounds of leaves blew into patterns—gods, people, animals that ran after each other before scattering back into leaves. In the distance, I could see two more areas behind the rotunda. One looked like a green pasture with sheep made out of clouds. The last section was a desert where tumbleweeds scratched strange patterns in the sand like Greek letters, smiley faces, and a huge advertisement that read: _watch Aeolus nightly!_

“One section for each of the four wind gods,” I guessed. “Four cardinal directions.”

“I’m loving that pasture.” Coach Hedge licked his lips. “You guys mind—”

“Go ahead,” I said.

I was actually relieved to send the satyr off. It would be hard enough getting on Aeolus’s good side without Coach Hedge waving his club and screaming, “Die!”

While the satyr ran off to attack springtime, Leo, Piper, and I walked down the road to the steps of the palace. We passed through the front doors into a white marble foyer decorated with purple banners that read _Olympian Weather Channel_ , and some that just read _OW!_

“Hello!”

A woman floated up to us. Literally floated.

She was pretty in the elfish way of nature spirits—petite, slightly pointy ears, and an ageless face that could’ve been sixteen or thirty. Her brown eyes twinkled cheerfully. Even though there was no wind, her dark hair blew in slow motion, shampoo-commercial style. Her white gown billowed around her like parachute material. I couldn’t tell if she had feet, but if so, they didn’t touch the floor. She had a white tablet computer in her hand.

“Are you from Lord Zeus?” she asked. “We’ve been expecting you.”

I tried to respond, but it was a little hard to think straight, because I’d just realized the woman was see-through. Her shape faded in and out like she was made of fog.

“Are you a ghost?” I asked.

Right away I knew I’d insulted her. The smile turned into a pout.

“I’m an aura, sir. A wind nymph, as you might expect, working for the lord of the winds. My name is Mellie. We don’t have ghosts.”

Piper came to the rescue. “No, of course you don’t! My friend simply mistook you for Helen of Troy, the most beautiful mortal of all time. It’s an easy mistake.”

Wow, she was good. The compliment seemed a little over the top, but Mellie the aura blushed.

“Oh … well, then. So you are from Zeus?”

“Er,” I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m the son of Zeus, yeah.”

“Excellent! Please, right this way.”

She led us through some security doors into another lobby, consulting her tablet as she floated. She didn’t look where she was going, but apparently it didn’t matter, as she drifted straight through a marble column with no problem.

“We’re out of prime time now, so that’s good,” she mused. “I can fit you in right before his 11:12 spot.”

“Um, okay,” I said.

The lobby was a pretty distracting place. Winds blasted around them, so it felt like I was pushing through an invisible crowd. Doors blew open and slammed by themselves. The things I could see were just as bizarre. Paper airplanes of all different sizes and shapes sped around, and other wind nymphs, aurai, would occasionally pluck them out of the air, unfold and read them, then toss them back into the air, where the planes would refold themselves and keep flying.

An ugly creature fluttered past. She looked like a mix between an old lady and a chicken on steroids. She had a wrinkled face with black hair tied in a hairnet, arms like a human plus wings like a chicken, and a fat, feathered body with talons for feet. It was amazing she could fly at all. She kept drifting around and bumping into things like a parade balloon.

“Not an aura?” I asked Mellie as the creature wobbled by.

Mellie laughed. “That’s a harpy, of course. Our, ah, ugly stepsisters, I suppose you would say. Don’t you have harpies on Olympus? They’re spirits of violent gusts, unlike us aurai. We’re all gentle breezes.” She batted her eyes.

“’Course you are,” I said.

“So,” Piper prompted, “you were taking us to see Aeolus?”

Mellie led us through a set of doors like an airlock. Above the interior door, a green light blinked.

“We have a few minutes before he starts,” Mellie said cheerfully. “He probably won’t kill you if we go in now. Come along!”

My jaw dropped.

The central section of Aeolus’s fortress was as big as a cathedral, with a soaring domed roof covered in silver. Television equipment floated randomly through the air—cameras, spotlights, set pieces, potted plants.

And there was no floor. Leo almost fell into the chasm before I pulled him back.

“Holy—!” Leo gulped. “Hey, Mellie. A little warning next time!”

An enormous circular pit plunged into the heart of the mountain. It was probably half a mile deep, honeycombed with caves. Some of the tunnels probably led straight outside. I remembered seeing winds blast out of them when we’d been on Pikes Peak. Other caves were sealed with some glistening material like glass or wax. The whole cavern bustled with harpies, aurai, and paper airplanes, but for someone who couldn’t fly, it would be a very long, very fatal fall.

“Oh, my,” Mellie gasped. “I’m so sorry.” She unclipped a walkie-talkie from somewhere inside her robes and spoke into it: “Hello, sets? Is that Nuggets? Hi, Nuggets. Could we get a floor in the main studio, please? Yes, a solid one. Thanks.”

A few seconds later, an army of harpies rose from the pit—three dozen or so demon chicken ladies, all carrying squares of various building material. They went to work hammering and gluing—and using large quantities of duct tape, which wasn’t exactly reassuring. In no time there was a makeshift floor snaking out over the chasm. It was made of plywood, marble blocks, carpet squares, wedges of grass sod—just about anything.

“That can’t be safe,” I said.

“Oh, it is!” Mellie assured me. “The harpies are very good.”

Easy for her to say. She just drifted across without touching the floor.

I decided I had the best chance at surviving, since I could fly, so I stepped out first. Amazingly, the floor held.

Piper gripped my hand. “If I fall, you’re catching me.”

“Uh, sure.”

Leo stepped out next. “You’re catching me, too, Superman. But I ain’t holding your hand.” I made a face at him.

Mellie led us toward the middle of the chamber, where a loose sphere of flat-panel video screens floated around a kind of control center. A man hovered inside, checking monitors and reading paper airplane messages.

He paid us no attention as Mellie brought us forward. She pushed a forty-two-inch Sony out of their way and took us into the control area. Leo whistled.

“I got to get a room like this.”

The floating screens showed all sorts of television programs. Some I recognized—news broadcasts, mostly—but some programs looked a little strange: gladiators fighting, demigods battling monsters. Maybe they were movies, but they looked more like reality shows. At the far end of the sphere was a silky blue backdrop like a cinema screen, with cameras and studio lights floating around it.

The man in the center was talking into an earpiece phone. He had a remote control in each hand and was pointing them at various screens, seemingly at random. He wore a business suit that looked like the sky—blue mostly, but dappled with clouds that changed and darkened and moved across the fabric. He looked like he was in his sixties, with a shock of white hair, but he had a ton of stage makeup on, and that smooth plastic-surgery look to his face, so he appeared not really young, not really old, just wrong—like a Ken doll someone had halfway melted in a microwave. His eyes darted back and forth from screen to screen, like he was trying to absorb everything at once. He muttered things into his phone, and his mouth kept twitching. He was either amused, or crazy, or both.

Mellie floated toward him. “Ah, sir, Mr. Aeolus, these demigods—”

“Hold it!” He held up a hand to silence her, then pointed at one of the screens. “Watch!”

It was one of those storm-chaser programs, where insane thrill-seekers drive after tornados. As I watched, a Jeep plowed straight into a funnel cloud and got tossed into the sky.

Aeolus shrieked with delight. “The Disaster Channel. People do that on purpose!” He turned toward me with a mad grin. “Isn’t that amazing? Let’s watch it again.”

“Um, sir,” Mellie said, “this is Jason, son of—”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” Aeolus said. “You’re back. How did it go?”

I hesitated. “Sorry? I think you’ve mistaken me—”

“No, no, Jason Grace, aren’t you? It was—what—last year? You were on your way to fight a sea monster, I believe.”

“I—I don’t remember.” But my brain was very keen on the information. I’d been here? Alone or with friends? Who had entrusted me with that mission? Damn Juno for being trapped with such a deadline. I’d much rather be here asking questions about my past life than possible locations for evil giants.

Aeolus laughed. “Must not have been a very good sea monster! No, I remember every hero who’s ever come to me for aid. Odysseus—gods, he docked at my island for a month! At least you only stayed a few days. Now, watch this video. These ducks get sucked straight into—”

“Sir,” Mellie interrupted. “Two minutes to air.”

“Air!” Aeolus exclaimed. “I love air. How do I look? Makeup!”

Immediately, a small tornado of brushes, blotters, and cotton balls descended on Aeolus. They blurred across his face in a cloud of flesh-tone smoke until his coloration was even more gruesome than before. Wind swirled through his hair and left it sticking up like a frosted Christmas tree.

“Mr. Aeolus.” I slipped off the golden backpack. “We brought you these rogue storm spirits.”

“Did you!” Aeolus looked at the bag like it was a gift from a fan—something he really didn’t want. “Well, how nice.”

Leo nudged me, and Jason offered the bag. “Boreas sent us to capture them for you. We hope you’ll accept them and stop—you know—ordering demigods to be killed.”

Aeolus laughed, and looked incredulously at Mellie. “Demigods be killed—did I order that?”

Mellie checked her computer tablet. “Yes, sir, fifteenth of September. ‘Storm spirits released by the death of Typhon, demigods to be held responsible,’ etc.… yes, a general order for them all to be killed.”

“Oh, pish,” Aeolus said. “I was just grumpy. Rescind that order, Mellie, and um, who’s on guard duty—Teriyaki? —Teri, take these storm spirits down to cell block Fourteen E, will you?”

A harpy swooped out of nowhere, snatched the golden bag, and spiraled into the abyss.

Aeolus grinned at me. “Now, sorry about that kill-on-sight business. But gods, I really was mad, wasn’t I?” His face suddenly darkened, and his suit did the same, the lapels flashing with lightning. “You know … I remember now. Almost seemed like a voice was telling me to give that order. A little cold tingle on the back of my neck.”

I tensed. A cold tingle on the back of his neck … Why did that sound so familiar? “A … um, voice in your head, sir?”

“Yes. How odd. Mellie, should we kill them?”

“No, sir,” she said patiently. “They just brought us the storm spirits, which makes everything all right.”

“Of course.” Aeolus laughed. “Sorry. Mellie, let’s send the demigods something nice. A box of chocolates, perhaps.”

“A box of chocolates to every demigod in the world, sir?”

“No, too expensive. Never mind. Wait, it’s time! I’m on!” Aeolus flew off toward the blue screen as newscast music started to play. I looked at Piper and Leo, who seemed just as confused as I was.

“Mellie,” I said, “is he … always like that?”

She smiled sheepishly. “Well, you know what they say. If you don’t like his mood, wait five minutes. That expression ‘whichever way the wind blows’ —that was based on him.”

“And that thing about the sea monster,” I said. “Was I here before?”

Mellie blushed. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember. I’m Mr. Aeolus’s new assistant. I’ve been with him longer than most, but still—not that long.”

“How long do his assistants usually last?” Piper asked.

“Oh …” Mellie thought for a moment. “I’ve been doing this for … twelve hours?”

A voice blared from floating speakers: “And now, weather every twelve minutes! Here’s your forecaster for Olympian Weather—the OW! channel —Aeolus!”

Lights blazed on Aeolus, who was now standing in front of the blue screen. His smile was unnaturally white, and he looked like he’d had so much caffeine his face was about to explode.

“Hello, Olympus! Aeolus, master of the winds here, with weather every twelve! We’ll have a low-pressure system moving over Florida today, so expect milder temperatures since Demeter wishes to spare the citrus farmers!”

He gestured at the blue screen, but when I checked the monitors, I saw that a digital image was being projected behind Aeolus, so it looked like he was standing in front of a U.S. map with animated smiley suns and frowny storm clouds.

“Along the eastern seaboard—oh, hold on.” He tapped his earpiece. “Sorry, folks! Poseidon is angry with Miami today, so it looks like that Florida freeze is back on! Sorry, Demeter. Over in the Midwest, I’m not sure what St. Louis did to offend Zeus, but you can expect winter storms! Boreas himself is being called down to punish the area with ice. Bad news, Missouri! No, wait. Hephaestus feels sorry for central Missouri, so you all will have much more moderate temperatures and sunny skies.”

Aeolus kept going like that—forecasting each area of the country and changing his prediction two or three times as he got messages over his earpiece—the gods apparently putting in orders for various winds and weather.

“This can’t be right,” I whispered. “Weather isn’t this random.”

Mellie smirked. “And how often are the mortal weathermen right? They talk about fronts and air pressure and moisture, but the weather surprises them all the time. At least Aeolus tells us why it’s so unpredictable. Very hard job, trying to appease all the gods at once. It’s enough to drive anyone …”

She trailed off, but I knew what she meant. Mad. Aeolus was completely mad.

“And that’s the weather,” Aeolus concluded. “See you in twelve minutes, because I’m sure it’ll change!”

The lights shut off, the video monitors went back to random coverage, and just for a moment, Aeolus’s face sagged with weariness. Then he seemed to remember he had guests, and he put a smile back on. “So, you brought me some rogue storm spirits,” Aeolus said. “I suppose … thanks! And did you want something else? I assume so. Demigods always do.”

Mellie said, “Um, sir, this is Zeus’s son.” “

Yes, yes. I know that. I said I remembered him from before.”

“But, sir, they’re here from Olympus.”

Aeolus looked stunned. Then he laughed so abruptly, I almost jumped into the chasm. “You mean you’re here on behalf of your father this time? Finally! I knew they would send someone to renegotiate my contract!”

“Um, what?” I asked.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Aeolus sighed with relief. “It’s been what, three thousand years since Zeus made me master of the winds. Not that I’m ungrateful, of course! But really, my contract is so vague. Obviously, I’m immortal, but ‘master of the winds.’ What does that mean? Am I a nature spirit? A demigod? A god? I want to be god of the winds, because the benefits are so much better. Can we start with that?”

I looked at my friends, mystified.

“Dude,” Leo said, “you think we’re here to promote you?”

“You are, then?” Aeolus grinned. His business suit turned completely blue—not a cloud in the fabric. “Marvelous! I mean, I think I’ve shown quite a bit of initiative with the weather channel, eh? And of course I’m in the press all the time. So many books have been written about me: Into Thin Air, Up in the Air, Gone with the Wind—”

“Er, I don’t think those are about you,” I said, before I noticed Mellie shaking her head.

“Nonsense,” Aeolus said. “Mellie, they’re biographies of me, aren’t they?”

“Absolutely, sir,” she squeaked.

“There, you see? I don’t read. Who has time? But obviously the mortals love me. So, we’ll change my official title to god of the winds. Then, about salary and staff—”

“Sir,” I said, “we’re not from Olympus.”

Aeolus blinked. “But—”

“I’m the son of Zeus, yes,” Jason said, “but we’re not here to negotiate your contract. We’re on a quest and we need your help.”

Aeolus’s expression hardened. “Like last time? Like every hero who comes here? Demigods! It’s always about you, isn’t it?”

“Sir, please, I don’t remember last time, but if you helped me once before—”

“I’m always helping! Well, sometimes I’m destroying, but mostly I’m helping, and sometimes I’m asked to do both at the same time! Why, Aeneas, the first of your kind—”

“My kind?” I asked. “You mean, demigods?”

“Oh, please!” Aeolus said. “I mean your line of demigods. You know, Aeneas, son of Venus—the only surviving hero of Troy. When the Greeks burned down his city, he escaped to Italy, where he founded the kingdom that would eventually become Rome, blah, blah, blah. That’s what I meant.”

“I don’t get it,” I admitted, although there was something fishy in what he had just said. Aeolus rolled his eyes.

“The point being, I was thrown in the middle of that conflict, too! Juno calls up: ‘Oh, Aeolus, destroy Aeneas’s ships for me. I don’t like him.’ Then Neptune says, ‘No, you don’t! That’s my territory. Calm the winds.’ Then Juno is like, ‘No, wreck his ships, or I’ll tell Jupiter you’re uncooperative!’ Do you think it’s easy juggling requests like that?”

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

“And don’t get me started on Amelia Earhart! I’m still getting angry calls from Olympus about knocking her out of the sky!”

“We just want information,” Piper said in her most calming voice. “We hear you know everything.”

Aeolus straightened his lapels and looked slightly mollified. “Well … that’s true, of course. For instance, I know that this business here”—he waggled his fingers at the three of us— “this harebrained scheme of Juno’s to bring you all together is likely to end in bloodshed. As for you, Piper McLean, I know your father is in serious trouble.”

He held out his hand, and a scrap of paper fluttered into his grasp. It was a photo of Piper and her dad. Piper took the photo. Her hands were shaking.

“This—this is from his wallet.”

“Yes,” Aeolus said. “All things lost in the wind eventually come to me. The photo blew away when the Earthborn captured him.”

“The what?” Piper asked.

Aeolus waved aside the question and narrowed his eyes at Leo. “Now, you, son of Hephaestus … yes, I see your future.” Another paper fell into the wind god’s hands—an old tattered drawing done in crayons. Leo took it as if it might be coated in poison. He staggered backward.

“Leo?” I said. “What is it?”

“Something I—I drew when I was a kid.” He folded it quickly and put it in his coat. “It’s … yeah, it’s nothing.”

Aeolus laughed. “Really? Just the key to your success! Now, where were we? Ah, yes, you wanted information. Are you sure about that? Sometimes information can be dangerous.”

He smiled at me like he was issuing a challenge. Behind him, Mellie shook her head in warning.

“Yeah,” I said. “We need to find the lair of Enceladus.”

Aeolus’s smile melted. “The giant? Why would you want to go there? He’s horrible! He doesn’t even watch my program!”

Piper held up the photo. “Aeolus, he’s got my father. We need to rescue him and find out where Hera is being held captive.”

“Now, that’s impossible,” Aeolus said. “Even I can’t see that, and believe me, I’ve tried. There’s a veil of magic over Hera’s location—very strong, impossible to locate.”

“She’s at a place called the Wolf House,” I said.

“Hold on!” Aeolus put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. “I’m getting something! Yes, she’s at a place called the Wolf House! Sadly, I don’t know where that is.”

“Enceladus does,” Piper persisted. “If you help us find him, we could get the location of the goddess—”

“Yeah,” Leo said, catching on. “And if we save her, she’d be really grateful to you-”

“And Zeus might promote you,” I finished.

Aeolus’s eyebrows crept up. “A promotion—and all you want from me is the giant’s location?”

“Well, if you could get us there, too,” I amended, “that would be great.”

Mellie clapped her hands in excitement. “Oh, he could do that! He often sends helpful winds—”

“Mellie, quiet!” Aeolus snapped. “I have half a mind to fire you for letting these people in under false pretenses.”

Her face paled. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” I said. “But about that help …”

Aeolus tilted his head as if thinking. Then I realized the wind lord was listening to voices in his earpiece.

“Well … Zeus approves,” Aeolus muttered. “He says … he says it would be better if you could avoid saving her until after the weekend, because he has a big party planned—Ow! That’s Aphrodite yelling at him, reminding him that the solstice starts at dawn. She says I should help you. And Hephaestus… yes. Hmm. Very rare they agree on anything. Hold on.”

I sighed in relief. Finally, we were having some good luck. Our godly parents were standing up for us.

Back toward the entrance, I heard a loud belch. Coach Hedge waddled in from the lobby, grass all over his face. Mellie saw him coming across the makeshift floor and caught her breath. “Who is that?”

I stifled a cough. “That? That’s just Coach Hedge. Uh, Gleeson Hedge. He’s our …” I wasn’t sure what to call him: teacher, friend, problem? “Our guide.”

“He’s so goatly,” Mellie murmured.

Behind her, Piper poofed out her cheeks, pretending to vomit.

“What’s up, guys?” Hedge trotted over. “Wow, nice place. Oh! Sod squares.”

“Coach, you just ate,” I said. “And we’re using the sod as a floor. This is Mellie-”

“An aura.” Hedge smiled winningly. “Beautiful as a summer breeze.”

Mellie blushed.

“And Aeolus here was just about to help us,” Jason said.

“Yes,” the wind lord muttered. “It seems so. You’ll find Enceladus on Mount Diablo.”

“Devil Mountain?” Leo asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“I remember that place!” Piper said. “I went there once with my dad. It’s just east of San Francisco Bay.”

“The Bay Area again?” The coach shook his head. “Not good. Not good at all.”

“Now …” Aeolus began to smile. “As to getting you there—”

Suddenly his face went slack. He bent over and tapped his earpiece as if it were malfunctioning. When he straightened again, his eyes were wild. Despite the makeup, he looked like an old man—an old, very frightened man.

“She hasn’t spoke to me for centuries. I can’t—yes, yes I understand.” He swallowed, regarding me as if he had suddenly turned into a giant cockroach. “I’m sorry, son of Jupiter. New orders. You all have to die.”

Mellie squeaked. “But—but, sir! Zeus said to help them. Aphrodite, Hephaestus—”

“Mellie!” Aeolus snapped. “Your job is already on the line. Besides, there are some orders that transcend even the wishes of the gods, especially when it comes to the forces of nature.”

“Whose orders?” I said. “Zeus will fire you if you don’t help us!”

“I doubt it.” Aeolus flicked his wrist, and far below them, a cell door opened in the pit. I could hear storm spirits screaming out of it, spiraling up toward us, howling for blood.

“Even Zeus understands the order of things,” Aeolus said. “And if she is waking—by all the gods—she cannot be denied. Good-bye, heroes. I’m terribly sorry, but I’ll have to make this quick. I’m back on the air in four minutes.”

I summoned my spear. Coach Hedge pulled out his club. Mellie the aura yelled, “No!”

She dived at our feet just as the storm spirits hit with hurricane force, blasting the floor to pieces, shredding the carpet samples and marble and linoleum into what should’ve been lethal projectiles, had Mellie’s robes not spread out like a shield and absorbed the brunt of the impact.

The five of us fell into the pit, and Aeolus screamed, “Mellie, you are so fired!”

“Quick,” Mellie yelled. “Son of Zeus, do you have any power over the air?”

“A little!”

“Then help me, or you’re all dead!”

Mellie grabbed my hand, and an electric charge went through my arm. I understood what she needed. We had to control the fall and head for one of the open tunnels. The storm spirits were following us down, closing rapidly, bringing with them a cloud of deadly shrapnel.

I grabbed Piper’s hand. “Group hug!”

Hedge, Leo, and Piper tried to huddle together, hanging on to Mellie and me as they fell.

“This is NOT GOOD!” Leo yelled.

“Bring it on, gas bags!” Hedge yelled up at the storm spirits. “I’ll pulverize you!”

“He’s magnificent,” Mellie sighed.

“Concentrate?” I prompted.

“Right!” she said.

We channeled the wind so the fall became more of a tumble into the nearest open chute. Still, we slammed into the tunnel at painful speed and went rolling over each other down a steep vent that was not designed for people. There was no way we could stop. Mellie’s robes billowed around her. We clung to her desperately, and we began to slow down, but the storm spirits were screaming into the tunnel behind us.

“Can’t—hold—long,” Mellie warned. “Stay together! When the winds hit—”

“You’re doing great, Mellie,” Hedge said. “My own mama was an aura, you know. She couldn’t have done better herself.”

“Iris-message me?” Mellie pleaded. Hedge winked.

“Could you guys plan your date later?” Piper screamed. “Look!”

Behind us, the tunnel was turning dark. I could feel my ears pop as the pressure built.

“Can’t hold them,” Mellie warned. “But I’ll try to shield you, do you one more favor.”

“Thanks, Mellie,” I said. “I hope you get a new job.”

She smiled, and then dissolved, wrapping us in a warm gentle breeze. Then the real winds hit, shooting us into the sky so fast, I blacked out.


	16. The valley of the titans

In my dream, I was on a terrace.

The sun shone on the stones of the pavement. A gentle breeze passed by me, terribly real. Over a marble railing, I could see a valley, full of green vegetation. A river crossed it, finishing up on a lake, and on its shore, there was a city. Around its white buildings, someone had drawn a line, so deep that I could see it even from my position.

The valley was beautiful, and it smelled of summer. I could hear voices coming from a strange construction close to the river, but I couldn’t see what it was. I should have been able to, but even in the dream it remained hidden from me.

I turned around. Grapevine trellises made a canopy overhead. Bees buzzed through honeysuckle and jasmine. In the middle of the terrace stood a statue of Bacchus in a sort of ballet position, wearing nothing but a loincloth, his cheeks puffed out and lips pursed, spouting water into a fountain.

There was a girl standing before the fountain. Her skin was brown, and her hair rested on her back in a long braid. She wore light blue jeans and a purple t-shirt, like the one I’d been wearing when I woke up in the bus. She’d rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, and I saw a tattoo on her forearm: a torch and a sword crossed, SPQR, three straight lines.

“I know you.”

The girl raised her face, and my heart stopped.

She was the same girl from my first memory, the friend I’d shared stories and jokes with. Just staring at her, I knew that I trusted her. That I missed her, even though I didn’t even remember her name.

“Jason?” Her voice was shaking, like she couldn’t believe it. Like she was about to cry. Like she was completely exhausted, and couldn’t stand for a second longer. I tried to step toward her, but my feet were glued to the ground.

“Where are you?” She was insistent. “What happened? How can I find you?”

I couldn’t talk. Gods, I could barely think. Every word that she said sent a shock of electricity through my body, a tornado ravaging my mind. I kept looking for memories, and they weren’t there. I could almost see the lightning breaking the abyss that was what had been my life.

But I knew her. I remembered her. I had to hold on to that.

“I remember you,” I said. My voice was barely a whisper.

Something in her face broke.

“What do you mean? Who did this to you?”

I had wished to meet whoever was looking for me, but I hadn’t realized that it would hurt this much.

“Juno,” I managed. “Juno. I can’t… I can’t-”

She took a step toward me, gritting her teeth. The breeze was gaining strength.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Where are you? Can you tell me that?”

“I don’t know.” It hurt. By all the gods, it hurt so much to see her disappointment every time I spoke. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, you idiot,” she said, and she took another step. Her breathing was heavy, as if her legs were made of lead. The wind, much stronger now, ruffled her braid and clothes.

Well, if she could walk, then so could I. We were so close, I knew that just a step would let me hold her hand.

“Reyna.” Her name rolled off my tongue, like it had thousands of times before. Reyna.

The wind howling in my ears, I took a step, and reached a hand out to hers.

I woke up with such force that I bumped something with my knees.

“What?” Hedge demanded. “Fight who? Where?”

“Falling!” Leo grabbed the table. “No—not falling. Where are we?”

I blinked. Leo, Piper, Hedge and I were sitting at a table at a sidewalk café. It was a sunny morning. The air was brisk but not unpleasant for sitting outside. At the other tables, a mix of bicyclists, business people, and college kids sat chatting and drinking coffee. I could smell eucalyptus trees. Lots of foot traffic passed in front of quaint little shops. The street was lined with bottle-brush trees and blooming azaleas as if winter was a foreign concept. In other words: we were in California.

There was no sign of the wind, or of Reyna. I tried to ignore the way my heart sunk. I had been so close. If only I’d had another second.

Leo frowned. “What are you wearing?”

The question was directed at Piper. She was wearing a turquoise dress, with black leggings and black leather boots. She had on a silver charm bracelet, and the old snowboarding jacket she’d had back at the Grand Canyon. She pulled out Katoptris, and checked her reflection. Looks like her mom really insisted in evening out her hair.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s my—” she cut herself off. “It’s nothing.”

Leo grinned. “Aphrodite strikes again, huh? You’re gonna be the best-dressed warrior in town, beauty queen.”

“Hey, Leo.” I nudged his arm. “You look at yourself recently?”

“What … oh.” Leo and Hedge had been given a makeover, too. Leo was wearing pinstriped pants, black leather shoes, a white collarless shirt with suspenders, and his tool belt, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a porkpie hat.

“God, Leo.” Piper looked like she was trying not to laugh. “I think my dad wore that to his last premiere, minus the tool belt.”

“Hey, shut up!”

“I think he looks good,” said Coach Hedge. “’Course, I look better.”

The satyr was a pastel nightmare. Aphrodite had given him a baggy canary yellow zoot suit with two-tone shoes that fit over his hooves. He had a matching yellow broad-brimmed hat, a rose-colored shirt, a baby blue tie, and a blue carnation in his lapel, which Hedge sniffed and then ate.

“Well,” I said, “at least your mom overlooked me.” I was dressed simply in jeans and a clean purple T-shirt, like Reyna had in my dream. I had new track shoes on, which I was really happy about, and I’d gotten a haircut, too. That I didn’t like that much.

Piper made a face, like she didn’t quite agree with me.

“Anyway,” she said, “how did we get here?”

“Oh, that would be Mellie,” Hedge said, chewing happily on his carnation. “Those winds shot us halfway across the country, I’d guess. We would’ve been smashed flat on impact, but Mellie’s last gift—a nice soft breeze—cushioned our fall.”

“And she got fired for us,” Leo said. “Man, we suck.”

“Ah, she’ll be fine,” Hedge said. “Besides, she couldn’t help herself. I’ve got that effect on nymphs. I’ll send her a message when we’re through with this quest and help her figure something out. That is one aura I could settle down with and raise a herd of baby goats.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Piper said. “Anyone else want coffee?”

“Coffee!” Hedge’s grin was stained blue from the flower. “I love coffee!”

“Um,” I said, “but—money? Our packs?”

Piper looked down. Our packs were at our feet, and everything seemed to still be there. I checked the pocket of my jeans. The golden coin hadn’t been moved.

Piper brought out a wad of cash. Leo whistled. “Allowance? Piper, your mom rocks!”

“Waitress!” Hedge called. “Six double espressos, and whatever these guys want. Put it on the girl’s tab.”

It didn’t take us long to figure out where we were. The menus said “Café Verve, Walnut Creek, CA.” And according to the waitress, it was 9 a.m. on December 21, the winter solstice, which gave us three hours until Enceladus’s deadline. We didn’t have to wonder where Mount Diablo was, either. We could see it on the horizon, right at the end of the street.

After the Rockies, Mount Diablo didn’t look very large, nor was it covered in snow. It seemed downright peaceful, its golden creases marbled with gray-green trees. But size was deceptive with mountains, I knew. It was probably much bigger up close. And appearances were deceptive too. Here we were in California, with sunny skies, mild weather, laid-back people, and a plate of chocolate chip scones with coffee. And only a few miles away, somewhere on that peaceful mountain, a superpowerful, super-evil giant was about to have Piper’s dad for lunch.

Leo pulled something out of his pocket—the old crayon drawing Aeolus had given him. Aphrodite must’ve thought it was important if she’d magically transferred it to his new outfit.

“What is that?” Piper asked. Leo folded it up gingerly again and put it away. “Nothing. You don’t want to see my kindergarten artwork.”

“It’s more than that,” I guessed. “Aeolus said it was the key to our success.”

Leo shook his head. “Not today. He was talking about… later.”

“How can you be sure?” Piper asked.

“Trust me,” Leo said. “Now—what’s our game plan?”

Coach Hedge belched. He’d already had three espressos and a plate of doughnuts, along with two napkins and another flower from the vase on the table. He would’ve eaten the silverware, except Piper had slapped his hand.

“Climb the mountain,” Hedge said. “Kill everything except Piper’s dad. Leave.”

“Thank you, General Eisenhower,” I grumbled.

“Hey, I’m just saying!”

“Guys,” Piper said. “There’s more you need to know.” She took a deep breath. “I… well, I figured some things out in my dreams.”

She didn’t look like she wanted to talk about it. I waited.

“I found out who the woman in the dirt is, and how she’s powerful enough to be bringing back the giants, and making the monsters not stay disintegrated. She’s… well, she’s Gaea, and she’s our real enemy, not the giants.”

“Gaea?” Leo shook his head. “Isn’t that Mother Nature? She’s supposed to have, like, flowers in her hair and birds singing around her and deer and rabbits doing her laundry.”

“Leo, that’s Snow White,” Piper said.

“Okay, but—”

“Listen, cupcake.” Coach Hedge dabbed the espresso out of his goatee. “Piper’s telling us some serious stuff, here. Gaea’s no softie. I’m not even sure I could take her.”

Leo whistled. “Really?”

Hedge nodded. “This earth lady—she and her old man the sky were nasty customers.”

“Ouranos,” Piper said. She looked up at the sky, as if she wanted to make sure it wasn’t staring at her.

“Right,” Hedge said. “So Ouranos, he’s not the best dad. He throws their first kids, the Cyclopes, into Tartarus. That makes Gaea mad, but she bides her time. Then they have another set of kids—the twelve Titans—and Gaea is afraid they’ll get thrown into prison too. So she goes up to her son Kronos—”

“The big bad dude,” Leo said. “The one they defeated last summer.”

“Right. And Gaea’s the one who gives him the scythe, and tells him, ‘Hey, why don’t I call your dad down here? And while he’s talking to me, distracted, you can cut him to pieces. Then you can take over the world. Wouldn’t that be great?’”

Nobody said anything. My chocolate chip scone didn’t look so appetizing anymore. Even though I knew the story, I still couldn’t quite get my mind around it. I tried to imagine a kid so messed up, he would kill his own dad just for power. Then I imagined a mom so messed up, she would convince her son to do it.

“Definitely not Snow White,” I decided.

“Nah, Kronos was a bad guy,” Hedge said. “But Gaea is literally the mother of all bad guys. She’s so old and powerful, so huge, that it’s hard for her to be fully conscious. Most of the time, she sleeps, and that’s the way we like her—snoring.”

“But she talked to me,” Leo said. “How can she be asleep?”

Hedge brushed crumbs off his canary yellow lapel. He was on his sixth espresso now, and his pupils were as big as quarters. “Even in her sleep, part of her consciousness is active—dreaming, keeping watch, doing little things like causing volcanoes to explode and monsters to rise. Even now, she’s not fully awake. Believe me, you don’t want to see her fully awake.”

“Right,” I said. “Bit of advice, though? Let’s not say her name all that much. Names have power, and we really, really don’t want to wake her up by calling her all the time.”

Leo snorted. “You mean, we’ve got to Voldemort her? She’s going to be You-Know-Who from now on?”

I shrugged. “You can always call her Dirtface or something like that.”

“Guys, back on serious things, she’s getting more powerful,” Piper said. “She’s causing the giants to rise. And if their king comes back—this guy Porphyrion—”

“He’ll raise an army to destroy the gods,” I put in. “Starting with Juno. It’ll be another war. And Mother Earth will wake up fully.”

Hedge nodded. “Which is why it’s a good idea for us to stay off the ground as much as possible.”

Leo looked warily at Mount Diablo. “So … climbing a mountain. That would be bad.”

Piper’s face fell. “Guys, I can’t ask you to do this,” she said. “This is too dangerous.”

“You kidding?” Hedge belched and showed them his blue carnation smile. “Who’s ready to beat stuff up?”

I had hoped the taxi could take us all the way to the top.

No such luck. The cab made lurching, grinding sounds as it climbed the mountain road, and halfway up we found the ranger’s station closed, a chain blocking the way.

“Far as I can go,” the cabbie said. “You sure about this? Gonna be a long walk back, and my car’s acting funny. I can’t wait for you.”

“We’re sure.”

I was the first one out. I had a bad feeling about what was wrong with the cab, and when I looked down I saw I was right. The wheels were sinking into the road like it was made of quicksand. Not fast—just enough to make the driver think he had some problem with the engine—but I knew different. The road was hard-packed dirt. No reason at all it should have been soft, but already my shoes were starting to sink. Gaea was messing with us.

Leo paid the cabbie. He was generous— “heck, why not? It’s Aphrodite’s money.”

“Keep the change,” he said. “And get out of here. Quick.”

The driver didn’t argue. Soon all we could see was his dust trail.

The view from the mountain was pretty amazing. The whole inland valley around Mount Diablo was a patchwork of towns—grids of tree-lined streets and nice middle-class suburbs, shops, and schools. All these normal people living normal lives—the kind I had never known.

“That’s Concord,” I said, pointing to the north. Facts spit out of my mouth, just like Reyna’s name had. “Walnut Creek below us. To the south, Danville, past those hills. And that way …” I pointed west, where a ridge of golden hills held back a layer of fog, like the rim of a bowl. “That’s the Berkeley Hills. The East Bay. Past that, San Francisco.”

“Jason?” Piper touched my arm. “You remember something? You’ve been here?”

“Yes … no.” I grit my teeth. These were the same mountains of my dream. Was Reyna here? Had I passed close to her, and not known it? “It seems important.”

“That’s Titan land.” Coach Hedge nodded toward the west. “Bad place, Jason. Trust me, this is as close to ’Frisco as we want to get.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d just been in these mountains, even though it was a dream, and it had felt right. I had known the place, and I had liked it. My best friend had been there. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see her or the valley from where we stood, but I still had to look. I had almost held her hand. I had remembered her name. Not two hours ago, I had been closer to home than I could remember. Hedge had to be wrong.

“Hey, guys,” Leo said. “Let’s keep moving.”

He pointed at the ground. I looked down, and noticed the problem. My heels were sinking in the dirt.

“Dirtface is stronger here,” Hedge grumbled. He popped his hooves free from his shoes, then handed the shoes to Leo. “Keep those for me, Valdez. They’re nice.”

Leo snorted. “Yes, sir, Coach. Would you like them polished?”

“That’s varsity thinking, Valdez.” Hedge nodded approvingly. “But first, we’d better hike up this mountain while we still can.”

“How do we know where the giant is?” Piper asked.

I pointed toward the peak. Drifting across the summit was a plume of smoke. From a distance, it had looked like a cloud, but it wasn’t. Something was burning.

“Smoke equals fire,” I said. “We’d better hurry.”

Climbing a mountain when the earth was trying to swallow my feet was like jogging on a flypaper treadmill. I was glad I’d gotten comfortable clothes from Aphrodite, because I honestly have no idea how Leo did it. In no time, he had rolled up the sleeves on his collarless shirt, even though the wind was cold and sharp. The only thing I envied him at that moment was the sunglasses. I had the sun in my eyes constantly.

Hedge went first, of course. His hooves gave him an advantage even in that horrible terrain. Piper walked behind him. She kept looking back once in a while, grief-stricken. I wanted to comfort her, but she wouldn’t hear it. She kept a hand inside her coat pocket, as if she was holding something important there. Another gift from Aphrodite?

Leo slipped his hands into his tool belt and started summoning supplies—gears, a tiny wrench, some strips of bronze. As he walked, he built—not really thinking about it, just fiddling with pieces. By the time they neared the crest of the mountain, Leo was the most fashionably dressed sweaty, dirty hero ever. His hands were covered in machine grease. The little object he’d made was like a windup toy—the kind that rattles and walks across a coffee table.

Climbing was frustrating. Every time I thought we might have reached the summit, it turned out to be just another ridge with an even higher one behind it.

Finally, we got to the top. I crouched behind a wall of rock, and gestured for the others to do the same. Leo crawled up next to me. Piper had to pull Coach Hedge down.

“I don’t want to get my outfit dirty!” Hedge complained.

“Shhh!” Piper said.

Reluctantly, the satyr knelt. Just over the ridge where we were hiding, in the shadow of the mountain’s final crest, was a forested depression about the size of a football field, where the giant Enceladus had set up camp.

Trees had been cut down to make a towering purple bonfire. The outer rim of the clearing was littered with extra logs and construction equipment —an earthmover; a big crane thing with rotating blades at the end like an electric shaver—must be a tree harvester, I thought—and a long metal column with an ax blade, like a sideways guillotine—a hydraulic ax.

Why a giant needed construction equipment, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t see how the creature in front of me could even fit in the driver’s seat. The giant Enceladus was so large, so horrible, I didn’t want to look at him. But I forced myself to focus on the monster.

To start with, he was thirty feet tall—easily as tall as the treetops. I was sure the giant could’ve seen us behind the ridge, but he seemed intent on the weird purple bonfire, circling it and chanting under his breath. From the waist up, the giant appeared humanoid, his muscular chest clad in bronze armor, decorated with flame designs. His arms were completely ripped. Each of his biceps was bigger than Leo. His skin was bronze but sooty with ash. His face was crudely shaped, like a half-finished clay figure, but his eyes glowed white, and his hair was matted in shaggy dreadlocks down to his shoulders, braided with bones. From the waist down, he was even more terrifying. His legs were scaly green, with claws instead of feet—like the forelegs of a dragon. In his hand, Enceladus held a spear the size of a flagpole. Every so often he dipped its tip in the fire, turning the metal molten red.

“Okay,” Coach Hedge whispered. “Here’s the plan—”

Leo elbowed him. “You’re not charging him alone!”

“Aw, c’mon.”

Piper choked back a sob. “Look.”

Just visible on the other side of the bonfire was a man tied to a post. His head slumped like he was unconscious, so I couldn’t make out his face, but Piper didn’t seem to have any doubts.

“Dad,” she said.

I swallowed. I wished this were a Tristan McLean movie. Then Piper’s dad would be faking unconsciousness. He’d untie his bonds and knock out the giant with some cleverly hidden anti-giant gas. Heroic music would start to play, and Tristan McLean would make his amazing escape, running away in slow motion while the mountainside exploded behind him.

But this wasn’t a movie. Tristan McLean was half dead and about to be eaten. The only people who could stop it—three fashionably dressed teenaged demigods and a megalomaniac goat.

“There’s four of us,” Hedge whispered urgently. “And only one of him.”

“Did you miss the fact that he’s thirty feet tall?” Leo asked.

“Okay,” Hedge said. “So Leo, me, and Jason distract him. Piper sneaks around and frees her dad.”

They all looked at me.

“What?” I asked. “I’m not the leader.”

“Yes,” Piper said. “You are.”

We’d never really talked about it, but no one disagreed, not even Hedge. Dammit. I hated being the leader. Thanks for the legacy, dad.

Okay, that was enough. This was a life or death situation. It was no time for complaining. And if my friends were trusting me with their lives, well, I could at least try my best.

“I hate to say it,” I sighed, “but Coach Hedge is right. A distraction is Piper’s best chance.”

Not a good chance. Not even a survivable chance. Just our best chance. We couldn’t sit there all day and talk about it, though. It had to be close to noon—the giant’s deadline—and the ground was still trying to pull them down. My knees had already sunk two inches into the dirt.

Leo brought out the little toy he’d made on the climb. “Let’s boogie,” he said. “Before I come to my senses.”


	17. I let my dad fry me

The plan went wrong almost immediately. Piper scrambled along the ridge, trying to keep her head down, while Leo, Coach Hedge, and I walked straight into the clearing.

I summoned my golden sword. I brandished it over my head and yelled, “Giant!” Which sounded pretty good, and a lot more confident than what I was thinking, something along the lines of, _We are pathetic ants! Don’t kill us!_

Enceladus stopped chanting at the flames. He turned toward us and grinned, revealing fangs like a saber-toothed tiger’s.

“Well,” the giant rumbled. “What a nice surprise.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I stood in front of the ugly thing. Leo stepped sideways, edging his way toward the bulldozer.

Coach Hedge shouted, “Let the movie star go, you big ugly cupcake! Or I’m gonna plant my hoof right up your—”

“Coach,” I said. “Shut up.”

Enceladus roared with laughter. “I’ve forgotten how funny satyrs are. When we rule the world, I think I’ll keep your kind around. You can entertain me while I eat all the other mortals.”

“Is that a compliment?” Hedge frowned. “I don’t think that was a compliment.”

Enceladus opened his mouth wide, and his teeth began to glow. “

Scatter!” Leo yelled.

Hedge and I dove to the left as the giant blew fire—a furnace blast so hot even Festus would’ve been jealous. Leo dodged behind the bulldozer, and I saw him climb into the driver’s seat for a second, and then run to the right, heading for the tree harvester.

I jumped to my feet. Piper still had to get to her dad, so there was only one thing left to do: charge the giant.

Coach Hedge ripped off his canary yellow jacket, which was now on fire, and bleated angrily. “I liked that outfit!” Then he raised his club and charged.

Before we could get very far, Enceladus slammed his spear against the ground.

The entire mountain shook. The shockwave sent me sprawling. I blinked, momentarily stunned. Through a haze of grassfire and bitter smoke, I saw Leo staggering to his feet on the other side of the clearing. Coach Hedge was knocked out cold. He’d fallen forward and hit his head on a log. His furry hindquarters were sticking straight up, with his canary yellow pants around his knees—a view I really didn’t need.

The giant bellowed, “I see you, Piper McLean!” He turned and blew fire at a line of bushes to Leo’s right. Piper ran into the clearing like a flushed quail, the underbrush burning behind her.

Enceladus laughed. “I’m happy you’ve arrived. And you brought me my prizes!”

My gut twisted. This was the moment Piper had warned us about. We’d played right into Enceladus’s hands.

Leo must have looked exactly as I did, because the giant laughed even louder. “That’s right, son of Hephaestus. I didn’t expect you all to stay alive this long, but it doesn’t matter. By bringing you here, Piper McLean has sealed the deal. If she betrays you, I’m as good as my word. She can take her father and go. What do I care about a movie star?”

I could see Piper’s dad more clearly now. He wore a ragged dress shirt and torn slacks. His bare feet were caked with mud. He wasn’t completely unconscious, because he lifted his head and groaned—yep, Tristan McLean all right. I had seen that face in my dreams. But he had a nasty cut down the side of his face, and he looked thin and sickly—not heroic at all.

“Dad!” Piper yelled.

Mr. McLean blinked, trying to focus. “Pipes …? Where …”

Piper drew her dagger and faced Enceladus. “Let him go!”

“Of course, dear,” the giant rumbled. “Swear your loyalty to me, and we have no problem. Only these others must die.”

Piper looked back and forth between us and her dad.

“He’ll kill you,” Leo warned. “Don’t trust him!” “

Oh, come now,” Enceladus bellowed. “You know I was born to fight Athena herself? Mother Gaea made each of us giants with a specific purpose, designed to fight and destroy a particular god. I was Athena’s nemesis, the anti-Athena, you might say. Compared to some of my brethren—I am small! But I am clever. And I keep my bargain with you, Piper McLean. It’s part of my plan!”

I was on my feet now, sword ready; but before I could act, Enceladus roared—a call so loud it echoed down the valley and was probably heard all the way to San Francisco.

At the edge the woods, half a dozen ogre-like creatures rose up. I realized with nauseating certainty that they hadn’t simply been hiding there. They’d risen straight out of the earth. The ogres shuffled forward. They were small compared to Enceladus, about seven feet tall. Each one of them had six arms—one pair in the regular spot, then an extra pair sprouting out the top of their shoulders, and another set shooting from the sides of their rib cages. They wore only ragged leather loincloths, and even across the clearing, I could smell them. Six guys who never bathed, with six armpits each. I decided if I survived this day, I’d have to take a three-hour shower just to forget the stench.

Leo stepped toward Piper. “What—what are those?”

Her blade reflected the purple light of the bonfire. “Gegenees.”

“In English?” Leo asked. “

The Earthborn,” she said. “Six-armed giants who fought Jason—the first Jason.”

“Very good, my dear!” Enceladus sounded delighted. “They used to live on a miserable place in Greece called Bear Mountain. Mount Diablo is much nicer! They are lesser children of Mother Earth, but they serve their purpose. They’re good with construction equipment—”

“Vroom, vroom!” one of the Earthborn bellowed, and the others took up the chant, each moving his six hands as though driving a car, as if it were some kind of weird religious ritual. “Vroom, vroom!”

“Yes, thank you, boys,” Enceladus said. “They also have a score to settle with heroes. Especially anyone named Jason.”

“Yay-son!” the Earthborn screamed. They all picked up clumps of earth, which solidified in their hands, turning to nasty pointed stones. “Where Yay-son? Kill Yay-son!”

Enceladus smiled. “You see, Piper, you have a choice. Save your father, or ah, try to save your friends and face certain death.”

Piper stepped forward. Her eyes blazed with such rage, even the Earthborn backed away. She radiated power and beauty, but it had nothing to do with her clothes or her makeup.

“You will not take the people I love,” she said. “None of them.”

Her words rippled across the clearing with such force, the Earthborn muttered, “Okay. Okay, sorry,” and began to retreat.

“Stand your ground, fools!” Enceladus bellowed. He snarled at Piper. “This is why we wanted you alive, my dear. You could have been so useful to us. But as you wish. Earth-born! I will show you Jason.”

My heart skipped a beat.

But the giant didn’t point to me. He pointed to the other side of the bonfire, where Tristan McLean hung helpless and half conscious.

“There is Jason,” Enceladus said with pleasure. “Tear him apart!”

What was I more proud of? One look, and all three of us knew the game plan. When had that happened, that we could read each other so well? Piper rushed to her father, while Leo dashed for the tree harvester, and I charged Enceladus.

The battle started well enough.

My instincts – thank whoever – kicked in, and I got the feeling I’d dueled opponents almost this big before. Size and strength equaled slowness, so I just had to be quicker—pace myself, wear out my opponent, and avoid getting smashed or flame-broiled.

I rolled away from the giant’s first spear thrust and jabbed Enceladus in the ankle. My sword managed to pierce the thick dragon hide, and golden ichor—the blood of immortals—trickled down the giant’s clawed foot.

Enceladus bellowed in pain and blasted me with fire. I scrambled away, rolling behind the giant, and struck again behind his knee. Enceladus stumbled. He was getting angry.

My gut was in full battle mode: jump, jab, roll, stab. I didn’t just feel like I’d done this before. I could see, in the back of my mind, flashes of a past battle. A black armor instead of bronze, splattered in silver and not ash. I jumped back at Enceladus striking the earth, and could almost remember the face of my old enemy.

Not now, I thought. I have to survive this. 

From the corner of my eye, I saw the Earthborn chasing Leo. They were fast, but Leo ran like a storm spirit. He leaped toward the harvester from five feet away and slammed into the driver’s seat. His hands flew across the controls, and the machine responded with unnatural speed—coming to life as if it knew how important this was.

“Ha!” I heard him scream, and I managed to stab Enceladus behind the knee again.

There was a rumble behind us, and I saw that Leo had ended two of the Earthborn under a fiery avalanche of logs. They’d melted back into the earth—hopefully to stay for a while. The other four ogres stumbled across burning logs and hot coals while Leo brought the harvester around. On the end of the crane arm, the wicked rotating blades began to whir.

Piper was at the stake, cutting her father free while Leo distracted the monsters.

Coach Hedge was still heroically passed out with his goat tail sticking up in the air. The whole side of the mountain would soon be ablaze.

Flames, my brain said. There were flames back then, too.

Enceladus struck again. I slid between his legs (not a visual I recommend) and asked the wind to help me get upright. Enceladus hadn’t even started to turn around, and I’d already slashed at his thigh. My sword was so dirty with ichor, it trickled down the blade and onto my arms. This is good, my brain supplied. I jumped out of the way again.

“Bad vroom-vroom!” cried an Earthborn behind me.

“Yeah, that’s right!” Leo yelled at them. “You want some bad vroom-vroom? Come on!”

I could only see the three ogres left throwing boulders at the harvester. Rocks slammed into metal. By the time I could see it again without being killed by a giant, the harvester looked like a crushed soda can, sinking in the mud.

“Dozer!” Leo yelled. At least he was alive.

Thirty feet away from Leo, the bulldozer roared to life. What the hell?

Piper cut her father free and caught him in her arms, and of course that was the second the ogres launched their second volley of stones. The dozer swiveled in the mud, skidding to intercept, and most of the rocks slammed into its shovel. The force was so great it pushed the dozer back. Two rocks ricocheted and struck their throwers. Two more Earthborn melted into clay. Unfortunately, one rock hit the dozer’s engine, sending up a cloud of oily smoke, and the dozer groaned to a stop.

Piper dragged her father below the ridge. The last Earth-born charged after her. I would have helped, but I was a bit busy trying not to die.

“Hey, stupid!” Leo yelled, and threw a screwdriver at the Earthborn.

“You die!” the Earthborn roared. “Friend of Yay-son dies!”

Leo burst into flames, yelled, “Hephaestus!” and charged at the ogre barehanded.

He never got there. Piper sliced up one side of the Earthborn and down the other, in two swift moves that made me want to whistle in appreciation. Six large arms dropped to the ground, boulders rolling out of their useless hands. The Earthborn melted into the ground.

Enceladus’s spear missed me by a millimeter. Dammit. I’d gotten too distracted.

I kept dodging and stabbing whenever I could, but the ground had started sticking to to my feet. Gaea was getting stronger, and the giant was getting faster.

Enceladus might be slow, but he wasn’t dumb. He began anticipating my moves, and my attacks were only annoying him, making him more enraged.

“I’m not some minor monster,” Enceladus bellowed. “I am a giant, born to destroy gods! Your little gold toothpick can’t kill me, boy.”

I didn’t waste energy replying. I was already tired. The ground clung to my feet, making me feel like I weighed an extra hundred pounds. The air was full of smoke that burned my lungs. Fires roared around me, stoked by the winds, and the temperature was approaching the heat of an oven.

I raised my sword to block the giant’s next strike—a big mistake. _Don’t fight force with force_ , a voice chided me—the wolf Lupa, who’d told me that long ago. I managed to deflect the spear, but it grazed my shoulder, and my arm went numb.

I backed up, almost tripping over a burning log. I had to delay—to keep the giant’s attention fixed on me. I retreated, trying to lure the giant to the edge of the clearing.

Enceladus could sense my weariness. The giant smiled, baring his fangs.

“The mighty Jason Grace,” he taunted. “Yes, we know about you, son of Jupiter. The one who led the assault on Mount Othrys. The one who singlehandedly slew the Titan Krios and toppled the black throne.”

My mind reeled. A horned helmet, and a starry night armor. I didn’t know those names, yet they made my skin tingle, as if my body remembered the pain my mind didn’t.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

I realized my mistake when Enceladus breathed fire. Distracted, I moved too slowly. The blast missed me, but heat blistered my back. I slammed into the ground, my clothes smoldering. I was blinded from ash and smoke, choking as I tried to breathe.

I scrambled back as the giant’s spear cleaved the ground between me feet. I managed to stand. If I could only summon one good blast of lightning—but I was already drained, and in this condition, the effort might kill me. I didn’t even know if electricity would harm the giant.

_Death in battle is honorable_ , said Lupa’s voice. That’s real comforting, I thought.

One last try: I took a deep breath and charged. Enceladus let me approach, grinning with anticipation. At the last second, I faked a strike and rolled between the giant’s legs. I came up quickly, thrusting with all my might, ready to stab the giant in the small of his back, but Enceladus anticipated the trick. He stepped aside with too much speed and agility for a giant, as if the earth were helping him move. He swept his spear sideways, met my javelin—and with a snap like a shotgun blast, the golden weapon exploded out of my hands.

The explosion was hotter than the giant’s breath, blinding me with golden light. The force knocked me off my feet, and squeezed the breath out of me.

When I regained my focus, I was sitting at the rim of a crater. Enceladus stood at the other side, staggering and confused. The encounter of the two weapons had released so much energy, it had blasted a perfect cone-shaped pit thirty feet deep, fusing the dirt and rock into a slick glassy substance. I wasn’t sure how I’d survived, but my clothes were steaming. I was out of energy. My weapon had fallen off the ridge of the mountain. And Enceladus was still very much alive.

I tried to get up, but my legs were like lead. Enceladus blinked at the destruction, then laughed.

“Impressive! Unfortunately, that was your last trick, demigod.” Enceladus leaped the crater in a single bound, planting his feet on either side of me. The giant raised his spear, its tip hovering six feet over my chest.

“And now,” Enceladus said, “my first sacrifice to Gaea!”

Time seemed to slow down, which was really frustrating, since I still couldn’t move. I felt myself sinking into the earth like the ground was a waterbed—comfortable, urging me to relax and give up. I wondered if the stories of the Underworld were true. Would I end up in the Fields of Punishment or Elysium? If I couldn’t remember any of my deeds, would they still count? I thought if the judges would take that into consideration, or if my dad would write me a note: “Please excuse Jason from eternal damnation. He has had amnesia.”

I couldn’t feel my arms. I could see the tip of the spear coming toward my chest in slow motion. I knew I should move, but I couldn’t seem to do it. Funny, I thought. All that effort to stay alive, and then, boom. You just lie there helplessly while a fire-breathing giant impales you.

Leo’s voice yelled, “Heads up!”

A large black metal wedge slammed into Enceladus with a massive _thunk!_ The giant toppled over and slid into the pit.

“Jason, get up!” Piper called. Her voice energized me, shook me out of the stupor. I sat up, my head groggy, while Piper grabbed me under the arms and hauled me to my feet.

“Don’t die on me,” she ordered. “You are not dying on me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She was alive. Her hair was smoldering. Her face was smudged with soot. She had a cut on her arm, her dress was torn, and she was missing a boot. I had never been more glad to see her.

About a hundred feet behind her, Leo was standing over a piece of construction equipment—a long cannonlike thing with a single massive piston, the edge broken clean off.

Then I looked down in the crater and saw where the other end of the hydraulic ax had gone. Enceladus was struggling to rise, an ax blade the size of a washing machine stuck in his breastplate.

Amazingly, the giant managed to pull the ax blade free. He yelled in pain and the mountain trembled. Golden ichor soaked the front of his armor, but Enceladus stood. Shakily, he bent down and retrieved his spear.

“Good try.” The giant winced. “But I cannot be beaten.”

As we watched, the giant’s armor mended itself, and the ichor stopped flowing. Even the cuts on his dragon-scale legs, which I had worked so hard to make, were now just pale scars. Leo ran up to us, saw the giant, and cursed. “What is it with this guy? Die, already!”

“My fate is preordained,” Enceladus said. “Giants cannot be killed by gods or heroes.”

“Only by both,” I said. The giant’s smile faltered, and I saw in his eyes something like fear. “It’s true, isn’t it? Gods and demigods have to work together to kill you.”

“You will not live long enough to try!” The giant started stumbling up the crater’s slope, slipping on the glassy sides.

“Anyone have a god handy?” Leo asked.

My heart filled with dread. I looked at the giant below us, struggling to get out of the pit, and I knew what had to happen.

“Leo,” I said, “if you’ve got a rope in that tool belt, get it ready.”

I leaped at the giant with no weapon but my bare hands.

“Enceladus!” Piper yelled. “Look behind you!” It was an obvious trick, but her voice was so compelling, even I bought it.

The giant said, “What?” and turned like there was an enormous spider on his back.

I tackled his legs at just the right moment. The giant lost his balance. Enceladus slammed into the crater and slid to the bottom. While he tried to rise, I put my arms around the giant’s neck. When Enceladus struggled to his feet, I was riding his shoulders.

“Get off!” Enceladus screamed. He tried to grab my legs, but I scrabbled around, squirming and climbing over the giant’s hair. _Father_ , I thought. _If I’ve ever done anything good, anything you approved of, help me now. I offer my own life—just save my friends._

Suddenly I could smell the metallic scent of a storm. Darkness swallowed the sun. The giant froze, sensing it too. I yelled to my friends, “Hit the deck!” And every hair on my head stood straight up.

_Crack!_ Lightning surged through my body, straight through Enceladus, and into the ground. The giant’s back stiffened, and I was thrown clear.

When I regained my bearings, I was slipping down the side of the crater, and the crater was cracking open. The lightning bolt had split the mountain itself. The earth rumbled and tore apart, and Enceladus’s legs slid into the chasm. He clawed helplessly at the glassy sides of the pit, and just for a moment managed to hold on to the edge, his hands trembling.

He fixed me with a look of hatred. “You’ve won nothing, boy. My brothers are rising, and they are ten times as strong as I. We will destroy the gods at their roots! You will die, and Olympus will die with—”

The giant lost his grip and fell into the crevice. The earth shook. I fell toward the rift.

“Grab hold!” Leo yelled.

My feet were at the edge of the chasm when he grabbed the rope, and Leo and Piper pulled me up. We stood together, exhausted and terrified, as the chasm closed like an angry mouth. The ground stopped pulling at our feet. For now, Gaea was gone.

The mountainside was on fire. Smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the air. I spotted a helicopter—maybe firefighters or reporters—coming toward us. All around us was carnage. The Earthborn had melted into piles of clay, leaving behind only their rock missiles and some nasty bits of loincloth, but I figured they would re-form soon enough. Construction equipment lay in ruins. The ground was scarred and blackened.

Coach Hedge started to move. He sat up with a groan and rubbed his head. His canary yellow pants were now the color of Dijon mustard mixed with mud. He blinked and looked around him at the battle scene. “Did I do this?”

Before I could reply, Hedge picked up his club and got shakily to his feet. “Yeah, you wanted some hoof? I gave you some hoof, cupcakes! Who’s the goat, huh?” He did a little dance, kicking rocks and making what were probably rude satyr gestures at the piles of clay.

Leo cracked a smile, and I couldn’t help it—I started to laugh. It probably sounded a little hysterical, but it was such a relief to be alive, I didn’t care. Then a man stood up across the clearing.

Tristan McLean staggered forward. His eyes were hollow, shell-shocked, like someone who’d just walked through a nuclear wasteland.

“Piper?” he called. His voice cracked. “Pipes, what—what is—”

He couldn’t complete the thought. Piper ran over to him and hugged him tightly, but he almost didn’t seem to know her. I had felt a similar way—that morning at the Grand Canyon, when I woke with no memory. But Mr. McLean had the opposite problem. He had too many memories, too much trauma his mind just couldn’t handle. He was coming apart.

“We need to get him out of here,” I said.

“Yeah, but how?” Leo said. “He’s in no shape to walk.”

I glanced up at the helicopter, which was now circling directly overhead.

“Can you make us a bullhorn or something?” I asked Leo. “Piper has some talking to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, thing: Jason hasn't lost his spear/sword. I always thought it was unfair that Percy got to keep Riptide and poor Jason lost his magical weapon in the first book, so I decided not to destroy it. It'll appear back in his pocket, like Riptide does!


	18. I get a (partial) memory reboot

As soon as we got on the helicopter, my mind exploded.

Okay, not literally. Let’s back up.

Borrowing the helicopter was easy. Piper needed only a few words through Leo’s improvised bullhorn to convince the pilot to land on the mountain. The Park Service copter was big enough for medical evacuations or search and rescue, and when Piper told the very nice ranger pilot lady that it would be a great idea to fly us to the Oakland Airport, she readily agreed.

“No,” Piper’s dad muttered, as they picked him up off the ground. “Piper, what—there were monsters—there were monsters—”

She needed both mine and Leo’s help to hold him, while Coach Hedge gathered our supplies. Fortunately, Hedge had put his pants and shoes back on, so Piper didn’t have to explain the goat legs.

Piper looked about to cry, seeing her dad like this—pushed beyond the breaking point, crying like a little boy. I didn’t know what the giant had done to him exactly, how the monsters had shattered his spirit, but I didn’t think I wanted to know.

“It’ll be okay, Dad,” Piper said, making her voice as soothing as possible. She seemed absolutely heartbroken to charmspeak her own dad, but it didn’t seem like there was another option. “These people are my friends. We’re going to help you. You’re safe now.”

He blinked, and looked up at the helicopter rotors. “Blades. They had a machine with so many blades. They had six arms …”

When we got him to the bay doors, the pilot came over to help. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

“Smoke inhalation,” I suggested. “Or heat exhaustion.”

“We should get him to a hospital,” the pilot said.

“It’s okay,” Piper said. “The airport is good.”

“Yeah, the airport is good,” the pilot agreed immediately. Then she frowned, as if uncertain why she’d changed her mind. “Isn’t he Tristan McLean, the movie star?”

“No,” Piper said. “He only looks like him. Forget it.”

“Yeah,” the pilot said. “Only looks like him. I—” She blinked, confused. “I forgot what I was saying. Let’s get going.”

I was impressed. That was some expert charmspeak. But Piper looked miserable.

Finally we got Piper’s dad on board, and the helicopter took off. The pilot kept getting questions over her radio, asking her where she was going, but she ignored them.

We veered away from the burning mountain and headed toward the Berkeley Hills. Leo fiddled with a lug nut from his tool belt. Coach Hedge chewed on the stub of his carnation, and for once he didn’t look in the mood to yell or boast. Piper and her dad talked as quietly as they could in a corner. We were careful not to watch. Tristan McLean was broken and shivering. He held on to Piper’s hand like he was afraid he might fall off the helicopter, and he talked about the Earth Mother and the giant Tsul’kälû, breathing fire. Piper’s eyes were full of tears.

I laid back against my seat. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep, but I couldn’t. I kept seeing fires on the hills, and starry nights turned into armors. Next to me, Reyna screamed at our troops, and I held the body of a friend in my arms. He’d had deep brown eyes and curly black hair, and his blood had stained my hands and my t-shirt. I could feel it like it was still happening: the smoke, the screams, the stones on the ground making us trip. My throat ached from the fumes, and the light in his eyes faded again and again.

I gazed at the valley below—the roads backing up as mortals stopped their cars and gawked at the burning mountain. My eyes seemed to scan it on their own, and my head hurt so much I thought I might pass out. Every turn, every creek, every patch of forest; it was like I could see them in superimposed images. Were there really monsters in them? Were they on fire? Was any of the people that I saw running up the hills real at all? Swords glimmered in the sun, and the steps of hundreds of people echoed inside the helicopter.

Behind me, Piper held her father’s hand, speaking to him about small things—her time at the Wilderness School, her cabin at Camp Half-Blood. She told him how Coach Hedge ate carnations and got knocked on his butt on Mount Diablo, how Leo had tamed a dragon, and how I had made wolves back down by talking in Latin. I only half-listened. Everybody in the helicopter seemed so far away from me, they might as well have been the memories.

We passed over the hills into the East Bay, and my already agonizing brain yelled so hard I almost jumped out of the doorway. Below us, among the hills and houses, a highway cut through a tunnel in the hills, connecting the East Bay with the inland towns.

“What is that?” I asked. The sound of my voice cut through the memories. I was in a helicopter with Leo and Piper. We were going to save Juno. And somewhere below, there was something so big that I wanted to let myself fall down, just to get close to it.

“Where?” Piper asked.

“That road,” I said. “The one that goes through the hills.”

Piper picked up the com helmet the pilot had given her and relayed the question over the radio.

“She says it’s Highway 24,” she reported. “That’s the Caldecott Tunnel. Why?”

I didn’t answer. Piper’s words were right, but at the same time they weren’t. It was the correct name, but something was missing. I should have been able to see something down there. Another clue. The entrance disappeared from view as we flew over downtown Oakland, but I still stared to the point where it had been, wishing for something, anything.

“Monsters,” said Tristan McLean. “I live in a world of monsters.”

Air traffic control didn’t want to let an unscheduled helicopter land at the Oakland Airport—until Piper got on the radio. Then it turned out to be no problem. We unloaded on the tarmac, and we all looked at Piper.

“What now?” I asked. I needed somebody else to make the decisions this time. Piper grimaced. She looked sadder than I’d ever seen her.

“First thing,” she said. “I—I have to get my dad home. I’m sorry, guys.”

Of course. She had to leave. I tried not to look too unhappy.

“Oh,” Leo said. “I mean, absolutely. He needs you right now. We can take it from here.”

“Pipes, no.” Her dad had been sitting in the helicopter doorway, a blanket around his shoulders. But he stumbled to his feet. “You have a mission. A quest. I can’t—”

“I’ll take care of him,” said Coach Hedge.

We all stared at him. The satyr was the last person I’d expected to offer.

“You?” Piper asked.

“I’m a protector,” said Coach Hedge. “That’s my job, not fighting.”

He sounded a little crestfallen, and I thought maybe he’d felt a bit useless after Piper recounted how he got knocked unconscious in the last battle. In his own way, maybe the satyr was as sensitive as Piper’s dad.

Then Hedge straightened, and set his jaw. “Of course, I’m good at fighting, too.” He glared at us all, daring us to argue.

“Yes,” I said.

“Terrifying,” Leo agreed.

The coach grunted. “But I’m a protector, and I can do this. Your dad’s right, Piper. You need to carry on with the quest.”

“But …” A stray tear fell through Piper’s cheek. “Dad …”

He held out his arms, and she hugged him.

“Let’s give them a minute,” I said, and we took the pilot a few yards down the tarmac. None of us spoke. We weren’t really in the mood for more words.

In the distance, Piper and her dad talked closely. She offered him the object she’d been carrying in her pocket ever since we woke up at the café: a small vial, about as big as her fist, full of a pink liquid. Piper’s dad took the vial with a shaking hand, and I had the strange feeling that he was saying goodbye.

He drank the contents of the vial. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he slumped forward. Piper caught him, and we ran up to help.

“Got him,” Hedge said. The satyr stumbled, but he was strong enough to hold Tristan McLean upright. “I already asked our ranger friend to call up his plane. It’s on the way now. Home address?”

Piper checked her dad’s pocket, and took a BlackBerry out of it. It seemed bizarre that he’d still have something so normal after all he’d been through, but I guessed Enceladus hadn’t seen any reason to take it.

“Everything’s on here,” Piper said. “Address, his chauffeur’s number. Just watch out for Jane.”

Hedge’s eyes lit up, like he sensed a possible fight. “Who’s Jane?”

By the time Piper explained, her dad’s sleek white Gulf-stream had taxied next to the helicopter. Hedge and the flight attendant got Piper’s dad on board.

Then Hedge came down one last time to say his good-byes. He gave Piper a hug and glared at Leo and me. “You cupcakes take care of this girl, you hear? Or I’m gonna make you do push-ups.”

“You got it, Coach,” Leo said, a smile tugging at his mouth.

“No push-ups,” I promised.

Piper gave the old satyr one more hug. “Thank you, Gleeson. Take care of him, please.”

“I got this, McLean,” he assured her. “They got root beer and veggie enchiladas on this flight, and one hundred percent linen napkins—yum! I could get used to this.”

Trotting up the stairs, he lost one shoe, and his hoof was visible for just a second. The flight attendant’s eyes widened, but she looked away and pretended nothing was wrong. I figured she’d probably seen stranger things, working for Tristan McLean.

When the plane was heading down the runaway, Piper started to cry. And not just small tears. I mean full on, absolutely understandable, sobbing and crying. Leo and I ran to hug her, and we found ourselves in the weirdest group hug ever, covered in soot, dirt and ichor, and in the middle of an airport runway.

“Your dad’s in good hands,” I said, trying to focus. “You did amazing.”

She sobbed into my shirt, breathing deep. Leo tapped her on the head uncomfortably, and gave me a look. I mouthed, _Organic life forms_ , and he managed a smile.

Piper straightened up, and took the Kleenex package Leo had just produced from his belt. The helicopter pilot was already looking uncomfortable, like she was starting to wonder why she’d flown them here.

“Thank you, guys,” Piper said. “I—”

I could tell that she was about to tell us something sappy. A speech, maybe. She’d thank us for helping her, because this was Piper, and she definitely had a way with words. I wondered if it would be too much to cut her off before she started, because she really didn’t need to thank us. I had been happy to be there for her, and one look at Leo let me know that he agreed with me.

Then, right next to me, the air began to shimmer. At first I thought it was heat off the tarmac, or maybe gas fumes from the helicopter, but I’d seen something like this before in Medea’s fountain. It was an Iris message.

An image appeared in the air—a dark-haired girl in silver winter camouflage, holding a bow. I stumbled back in surprise. “Thalia!”

“Thank the gods,” said my sister. The scene behind her was hard to make out, but I heard yelling, metal clashing on metal, and explosions. And by Piper and Leo’s expressions, this wasn’t just in my head.

“We’ve found her,” Thalia said. “Where are you?”

“Oakland,” I said. “Where are you?”

“The Wolf House! Oakland is good; you’re not too far. We’re holding off the giant’s minions, but we can’t hold them forever. Get here before sunset, or it’s all over.”

“Then it’s not too late?” Piper cried. I felt a burst of hope, but Thalia’s expression quickly dampened it.

“Not yet,” Thalia said. “But Jason—it’s worse than I realized. Porphyrion is rising. Hurry.”

“But where is the Wolf House?” I pleaded. My memory flashbacks had failed to cover that.

“Our last trip,” Thalia said, her image starting to flicker. “The park. Jack London. Remember?”

Of course. I remembered it now, in bits and pieces. _The one place every demigod knows by heart._ I tottered, and the Iris message disappeared.

“Bro, you all right?” Leo asked. “You know where she is?”

“Yes,” I said. Of course I did. The question was, how could I have forgotten? “Sonoma Valley. Not far. Not by air.”

Piper turned to the ranger pilot, who’d been watching all this with an increasingly puzzled expression.

“Ma’am,” Piper said with her best smile. “You don’t mind helping us one more time, do you?”

“I don’t mind,” the pilot agreed.

“We can’t take a mortal into battle,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.” I turned to Leo. “Do you think you could fly this thing?”

“Um …” Leo’s expression didn’t exactly reassure me. But then he put his hand on the side of the helicopter, concentrating hard, as if listening to the machine.

“Bell 412HP utility helicopter,” Leo said. “Composite four-blade main rotor, cruising speed twenty-two knots, service ceiling twenty-thousand feet. The tank is near full. Sure, I can fly it.”

Piper smiled at the ranger again. “You don’t have a problem with an under-aged unlicensed kid borrowing your copter, do you? We’ll return it.”

“I—” The pilot nearly choked on the words, but she got them out: “I don’t have a problem with that.”

Leo grinned. “Hop in, kids. Uncle Leo’s gonna take you for a ride.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter! I'm slowly getting back to writing, so the end will be a bit more spaced out than the rest has been, but I hope I can keep the quality on the same level! Thanks so much for staying up to this point!


	19. The Wolf House

Fly a helicopter? Sure, why not? We’d done plenty of crazier things that week. Leo had killed cyclopes, made remote controls for bulldozers and repaired a gigantic dragon. I figured a helicopter wouldn’t be much of a challenge for him.

The sun was going down as we flew north over the Richmond Bridge, and I couldn’t believe the day had gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like a good fight to the death to make time fly.

It was funny to watch Leo piloting the chopper. Sometimes, without even looking, he flipped switches, checked the altimeter, eased break on the stick and flied straight. And then, just as he looked down on the controls, his hands started shaking, his eyes widened, and the helicopter wobbled.

“ _Cállate_ , Aunt Rosa,” he muttered. I decided not to ask what that was about.

“Going okay?” Piper asked from the copilot’s seat. She sounded more nervous than I was. Leo gave her a smile.

“Aces,” he said. “So what’s the Wolf House?”

I knelt between their seats, so they could hear me despite the sound of the chopper. It was nice to finally know the answer to a question.

“It’s an abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London.” The name brought me memories of fires at night, hushed stories and the smell of toasted marshmallows.

Leo furrowed his brow. “He an actor?”

“Writer,” Piper said. “Adventure stuff, right? Call of the Wild? White Fang?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was a son of Mercury—I mean, Hermes. He was an adventurer, traveled the world. He was even a hobo for a while. Then he made a fortune writing. He bought a big ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion—the Wolf House.”

“Named that ’cause he wrote about wolves?” Leo guessed.

“Partially,” I said, even though that had been the least important reason. “But the site, and the reason he wrote about wolves—” I faltered for a second. Lupa’s eyes seemed to look at me from between the clouds, even though she wasn’t there. “He was dropping hints about his personal experience. There’re a lot of holes in his life story—how he was born, who his dad was, why he wandered around so much—stuff you can only explain if you know he was a demigod.”

The bay slipped behind us, and the helicopter continued north. Ahead of us, yellow hills rolled out as far as I could see.

“So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood,” Leo guessed.

“No,” I said. This wasn’t instinct; it was knowledge. The words felt heavy in my mouth, but at the same time I was relieved to say them. “No, he didn’t.”

“Bro, you’re freaking me out with the mysterious talk. Are you remembering your past or not?”

“Pieces,” I said. I thought of burning hills and empty eyes. “Only pieces. The Wolf House is on sacred ground. It’s where London started his journey as a child—where he found out he was a demigod. That’s why he returned there. He thought he could live there, claim that land, but it wasn’t meant for him. The Wolf House was cursed. It burned in a fire a week before he and his wife were supposed to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site.”

“So,” Piper said, “how do you know all this?”

I could see the Wolf House the way it had been my first time there. I could hear Reyna’s words: _The place very demigod knows by heart._ It looked like she’d been wrong, then, but not about me.

“I started my journey there too,” I said. “It’s a powerful place for demigods, a dangerous place. If Gaea can claim it, use its power to entomb Hera on the solstice and raise Porphyrion—that might be enough to awaken the earth goddess fully.”

There was silence after I stopped speaking. After all, I hadn’t exactly given the best news of the day. Leo kept his hand on the joystick, guiding the chopper at full speed—racing toward the north. I could see some weather ahead—a spot of darkness like a cloudbank or a storm, right where we were going. Piper’s eyes were fixed on a point across the window. Once in a while, she’d twitch her fingers.

The helicopter shuddered. Metal creaked, and I saw that Leo was shivering. He leveled out the chopper, and the creaking stopped.

“Thirty minutes out,” he said, “If you want to get some rest, now’s a good time.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I strapped myself into the back of the helicopter, and my eyes closed on their own.

Getting close to the Wolf House must have had a crazy effect on Juno’s spell, because my dreams were a whirlwind.

I was small, tired and hungry, and there was a pack of wolves all around me. We ran and ran, and every time I tripped I held on to the fur of the black wolf that marched next to me, and she growled.

I was falling among grey clouds, the wind piercing through me. Somebody called my name, and I was terrified of crashing against the ground.

I was standing in front of a crowd of people in togas, and my whole body crackled with electricity. Somebody went to put a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped away. The crowd gasped, and somebody stood up and yelled.

I was sitting on a marble floor, the dim lights just barely letting me see a figure in front of a fire: a teenager, his arms raised to the sky. He turned around, and he was smiling at me, but I couldn’t understand his words.

I was turning a key in a lock, and I took a purple cape off my shoulders. I closed the door behind me, and there was a white light in front of me, blinding me, filling up the corridor, and I couldn’t move…

When I first woke up, I thought that rocks were pelting the windshield. Then I realized it was sleet. Frost built up around the edges of the glass, and slushy waves of ice blotted out the view.

“An ice storm?” Piper shouted over the engine and the wind. “Is it supposed to be this cold in Sonoma?”

I wasn’t sure, but something about this storm seemed conscious, malevolent—like it was intentionally slamming us. I crawled forward, grabbing Leo and Piper’s seats for balance. “We’ve got to be getting close.”

Leo was too busy wrestling with the stick to reply. Suddenly, it seemed hard for him to drive the chopper. Its movements turned sluggish and jerky. The whole machine shuddered in the icy wind. The helicopter probably hadn’t been prepped for cold-weather flying. The controls refused to respond, and we started to lose altitude. Below us, the ground was a dark quilt of trees and fog. The ridge of a hill loomed in front of us and Leo yanked the stick, just clearing the treetops.

That’s when I saw it.

“There!” I shouted. A small valley opened up before us, with the murky shape of a building in the middle. Leo aimed the helicopter straight for it. All around us were flashes of light that reminded me of the tracer fire at Midas’s compound. Trees cracked and exploded at the edges of the clearing. Shapes moved through the mist. Combat seemed to be everywhere.

Leo set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. Two seconds later, I heard a whistling sound and saw a dark shape hurtling toward us out of the mist.

“Out!” Leo screamed. We leaped from the helicopter and barely cleared the rotors before a massive BOOM shook the ground, knocking me off my feet and splattering ice all over me.

I got up shakily and saw that the world’s largest snowball—a chunk of snow, ice, and dirt the size of a garage—had completely flattened the helicopter. Next to me, Piper was getting back on her feet, and Leo, close enough to the explosion that it scared me, looked at the charred helicopter with wide brown eyes.

“You all right?” Piper and I ran up to him. Up close, he looked fine, except for being speckled with snow and mud.

“Yeah.” Leo shivered. “Guess we owe that ranger lady a new helicopter.”

Piper pointed south. “Fighting’s over there.” Then she frowned. “No … it’s all around us.”

She was right. The sounds of combat rang across the valley. The snow and mist made it hard to tell for sure, but there seemed to be a circle of fighting all around the Wolf House.

Behind us loomed Jack London’s dream home—a massive ruin of red and gray stones and rough-hewn timber beams. I could imagine how it had looked before it burned down—a combination log cabin and castle, like a billionaire lumberjack might build. But in the mist and sleet, the place had a lonely, haunted feel. The ruins really looked cursed.

“Jason!” a girl’s voice called.

Thalia appeared from the fog, her parka caked with snow. Her bow was in her hand, and her quiver was almost empty. She ran toward us, but made it only a few steps before a six-armed ogre—one of the Earthborn—burst out of the storm behind her, a raised club in each hand.

“Look out!” Leo yelled.

We rushed to help, but Thalia had it under control. She launched herself into a flip, notching an arrow as she pivoted like a gymnast and landed in a kneeling position. The ogre got a silver arrow right between the eyes and melted into a pile of clay.

Thalia stood and retrieved her arrow, but the point had snapped off. “That was my last one.” She kicked the pile of clay resentfully. “Stupid ogre.”

“Nice shot, though,” Leo said.

Thalia ignored him as usual (it was still weird for me to think of my sister as a Hunter). She hugged me and nodded to Piper. “Just in time. My Hunters are holding a perimeter around the mansion, but we’ll be overrun any minute.”

“By Earthborn?” I asked.

“And wolves—Lycaon’s minions.” Thalia blew a fleck of ice off her nose. “Also storm spirits—”

“But we gave them to Aeolus!” Piper protested.

“Who tried to kill us,” Leo reminded her. “Maybe he’s helping Gaea again.”

“I don’t know,” Thalia said. “But the monsters keep re-forming almost as fast as we can kill them. We took the Wolf House with no problem: surprised the guards and sent them straight to Tartarus. But then this freak snowstorm blew in. Wave after wave of monsters started attacking. Now we’re surrounded. I don’t know who or what is leading the assault, but I think they planned this. It was a trap to kill anyone who tried to rescue Hera.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Inside,” Thalia said. “We tried to free her, but we can’t figure out how to break the cage. It’s only a few minutes until the sun goes down. Hera thinks that’s the moment when Porphyrion will be reborn. Plus, most monsters are stronger at night. If we don’t free Hera soon—”

She didn’t need to finish the thought. The three of us followed her into the ruined mansion.

I stepped over the threshold and immediately collapsed. If my head had been hurting before, now it was about to explode. I was suddenly very happy that I hadn’t been to the valley where I’d seen Reyna. If the Wolf House had this effect on me, I couldn’t imagine what that place would do.

“Hey!” I heard Leo’s voice close to my ear. At least I hadn’t fallen to the ground. “None of that, man. What’s wrong?”

“This place …” I shook my head, trying to chase away my memories. _Not now, brain. Wait until we’re not about to die_. “Sorry … It came rushing back to me.”

“So you have been here,” Piper said.

“We both have,” Thalia said. Her expression was grim, like she was reliving someone’s death. “This is where my mom took us when Jason was a child. She left him here, told me he was dead. He just disappeared.”

“She gave me to the wolves,” I murmured. It had been right there, in that same stone square. “At Hera’s insistence. She gave me to Lupa.”

“That part I didn’t know.” Thalia frowned. “Who is Lupa?”

An explosion shook the building. Just outside, a blue mushroom cloud billowed up, raining snowflakes and ice like a nuclear blast made of cold instead of heat.

“Maybe this isn’t the time for questions,” Leo suggested. “Show us the goddess.”

I managed to stay upright. I knew the house better than anyone; I had to be alert to guide my friends. The house was built in a giant U, and I led our group between the two wings to an outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool. At the bottom of the pool, just as I had seen in my dream, two spires of rock and root tendrils had cracked through the foundation.

One of the spires was much bigger—a solid dark mass about twenty feet high, and it kinda looked like a stone body bag. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils I could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like the creature was stuck waist deep in the earth. No, not stuck—rising.

On the opposite end of the pool, the other spire was smaller and more loosely woven. Each tendril was as thick as a telephone pole, with so little space between them that I doubted I could’ve gotten an arm through. Still, I could see inside. And in the center of the cage stood Juno.

She looked different than I’d expected: dark hair covered with a shawl, the black dress of a widow, a wrinkled face with glinting, scary eyes. She didn’t glow or radiate any sort of power. She looked like a regular mortal woman, no trace of a crown, an armor or her goatskin cape.

Leo dropped into the pool and approached the cage. “ _Hola, Tía_. Little bit of trouble?”

She crossed her arms and sighed in exasperation. “Don’t inspect me like I’m one of your machines, Leo Valdez. Get me out of here!”

Thalia stepped next to him and looked at the cage with distaste—or maybe she was looking at the goddess. “We tried everything we could think of, Leo, but maybe my heart wasn’t in it. If it was up to me, I’d just leave her in there.”

“Ohh, Thalia Grace,” the goddess said. “When I get out of here, you’ll be sorry you were ever born.”

“Save it!” Thalia snapped. “You’ve been nothing but a curse to every child of Zeus for ages. You sent a bunch of intestinally challenged cows after my friend Annabeth—”

“She was disrespectful!”

“You dropped a statue on my legs.”

“It was an accident!”

“And you took my brother!” Thalia’s voice cracked with emotion. I noticed my cheeks burning. Being the center of a soap opera family drama wasn’t my idea of a good time. “Here—on this spot. You ruined our lives. We should leave you to Gaea!”

“Hey,” I intervened. “Thalia—Sis—I know. But this isn’t the time. You should help your Hunters.”

Thalia clenched her jaw. “Fine. For you, Jason. But if you ask me, she isn’t worth it.”

Thalia turned, leaped out of the pool, and stormed from the building. I sighed. Thalia wasn’t wrong, but we didn’t have a choice.

Leo turned to Juno with a newfound smirk. “Intestinally challenged cows?”

“Focus on the cage, Leo,” she grumbled. “And Jason—you are wiser than your sister. I chose my champion well.”

“I’m not your champion, lady,” I said. “I’m only helping you because you stole my memories and you’re better than the alternative. Speaking of which, what’s going on with that?”

I nodded to the other spire that looked like the king-size granite body bag. Was I imagining it, or had it grown taller since we’d gotten here?

“That, Jason,” Juno said, “is the king of the giants being reborn.”

“Gross,” Piper said.

“Indeed,” Juno said. “Porphyrion, the strongest of his kind. Gaea needed a great deal of power to raise him again —my power. For weeks I’ve grown weaker as my essence was used to grow him a new form.”

“So you’re like a heat lamp,” Leo guessed. “Or fertilizer.”

The goddess glared at him, but Leo didn’t seem to care. I didn’t either. From what he’d told me, this old lady had been making his life miserable since he was a baby. He totally had rights to rag on her.

“Joke all you wish,” Juno said in a clipped tone. “But at sundown, it will be too late. The giant will awake. He will offer me a choice: marry him, or be consumed by the earth. And I cannot marry him. We will all be destroyed. And as we die, Gaea will awaken.”

Leo frowned at the giant’s spire. “Can’t we blow it up or something?”

“Without me, you do not have the power,” Juno said. “You might as well try to destroy a mountain.”

“Done that once today,” I said. I slipped my hand into my pocket, and I was only half surprised to see that the golden coin had reappeared inside it. Apparently, it could break a mountain and survive. Good to know.

“Just hurry up and let me out!” Juno demanded.

I scratched my head. “Leo, can you do it?”

“I don’t know.” Leo looked like he was trying not to panic. “Besides, if she’s a goddess, why hasn’t she busted herself out?”

Juno paced furiously around her cage, cursing in Ancient Greek. “Use your brain, Leo Valdez. I picked you because you’re intelligent. Once trapped, a god’s power is useless. Your own father trapped me once in a golden chair. It was humiliating! I had to beg—beg him for my freedom and apologize for throwing him off Olympus.”

“Sounds fair,” Leo said.

Juno gave him the godly stink-eye. “I’ve watched you since you were a child, son of Hephaestus, because I knew you could aid me at this moment. If anyone can find a way to destroy this abomination, it is you.”

“But it’s not a machine. It’s like Gaea thrust her hand out of the ground and …”

Leo shook his head. “The forge and dove shall break the cage,” he murmured.

“What?” said Juno.

“Hold on.” Leo was suddenly bursting with energy. “I do have an idea. Piper, I’m going to need your help. And we’re going to need time.”

The air turned brittle with cold. The temperature dropped so fast, my lips cracked and my breath changed to mist. Frost coated the walls of the Wolf House. _Venti_ rushed in —but instead of winged men, these were shaped like horses, with dark storm-cloud bodies and manes that crackled with lightning. Some had silver arrows sticking out of their flanks. Behind them came red-eyed wolves and the six-armed Earthborn.

Piper drew her dagger. Leo reached into his tool belt, produced a tin of breath mints, shoved them back in, and drew a hammer instead. I flipped my coin, and got the golden spear. I gripped it firmly, and it was like all the half-memories I’d gotten back were supporting me. I’d done this before, countless times. I would live, and then I would go back home.

One of the wolves padded forward. It was dragging a human-size statue by the leg. At the edge of the pool, the wolf opened its maw and dropped the statue for them to see—an ice sculpture of a girl, an archer with short spiky hair and a surprised look on her face.

“Thalia!” I rushed forward, but Piper and Leo pulled me back. The ground around Thalia’s statue was already webbed with ice.

“Jason, don’t!” said Piper. “If you touch her, you’ll freeze too!”

“Who did this?” I yelled. I was so angry, I could feel thousands of volts crackling through my spine. “I’ll kill you myself!”

From somewhere behind the monsters, I heard a girl’s laughter, clear and cold. She stepped out of the mist in her snowy white dress, a silver crown atop her long black hair. She regarded them with those deep brown eyes that had creeped me out so much in Quebec.

“ _Bon soir, mes amis_ ,” said Khione, the goddess of snow. She gave Leo a frosty smile. “Alas, son of Hephaestus, you say you need time? I’m afraid time is one tool you do not have.”

Okay, let’s be honest for a moment: after the fight on Mount Diablo, I didn’t think I could ever feel more afraid or devastated. _Ding, ding, wrong!_

Now my sister was frozen at my feet. We were surrounded by monsters. We had approximately five minutes until the king of the giants busted out and destroyed us. I had already pulled my biggest ace, calling down Jupiter’s lightning when I’d fought Enceladus, and I doubted I’d have the strength or the cooperation from above to do it again. Which meant that our army was made up of one whiny imprisoned goddess, a girl who, even though she was dangerous, still hadn’t trained at all to use her dagger, and Leo, who was so distracted he’d try to defeat the armies of darkness with breath mints.

On top of all this, my worst memories kept flooding back. I knew for certain I’d done many dangerous things in my life, but being this close to death was rare, and I hated it with all my guts.

The enemy was beautiful. Khione smiled, her dark eyes glittering, as a dagger of ice grew in her hand.

“What’ve you done?” I demanded. The lightning running across me was so strong, the snow melted at my feet.

“Oh, so many things,” the snow goddess purred. “Your sister’s not dead, if that’s what you mean. She and her Hunters will make fine toys for our wolves. I thought we’d defrost them one at a time and hunt them down for amusement. Let them be the prey for once.”

The wolves snarled appreciatively.

“Yes, my dears.” Khione kept her eyes on me, reminding me of Boreas’ temple back in Canada. “Your sister almost killed their king, you know. Lycaon’s off in a cave somewhere, no doubt licking his wounds, but his minions have joined us to take revenge for their master. And soon Porphyrion will arise, and we shall rule the world.”

“Traitor!” Juno shouted. “You meddlesome, D-list goddess! You aren’t worthy to pour my wine, much less rule the world.”

Khione sighed. “Tiresome as ever, Queen Hera. I’ve been wanting to shut you up for millennia.”

Khione waved her hand, and ice encased the prison, sealing in the spaces between the earthen tendrils.

“That’s better,” the snow goddess said. “Now, demigods, about your death—”

“You’re the one who tricked Hera into coming here,” I said. It was all becoming so clear now. “You gave Zeus the idea of closing Olympus.”

The wolves snarled, and the storm spirits whinnied, ready to attack, but Khione held up her hand. “Patience, my loves. If he wants to talk, what matter? The sun is setting, and time is on our side. Of course, Jason Grace. Like snow, my voice is quiet and gentle, and very cold. It’s easy for me to whisper to the other gods, especially when I am only confirming their own deepest fears. I also whispered in Aeolus’s ear that he should issue an order to kill demigods. It is a small service for Gaea, but I’m sure I will be well rewarded when her sons the giants come to power.”

“You could’ve killed us in Quebec,” I said. “Why let us live?”

Khione wrinkled her nose. “Messy business, killing you in my father’s house, especially when he insists on meeting all visitors. I did try, you remember. It would’ve been lovely if he’d agreed to turn you to ice. But once he’d given you guarantee of safe passage, I couldn’t openly disobey him. My father is an old fool. He lives in fear of Zeus and Aeolus, but he’s still powerful. Soon enough, when my new masters have awakened, I will depose Boreas and take the throne of the North Wind, but not just yet. Besides, my father did have a point. Your quest was suicidal. I fully expected you to fail.”

“And to help us with that,” Leo said, “you knocked our dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Those frozen wires in his head—that was your fault. You’re gonna pay for that.”

“You’re also the one who kept Enceladus informed about us,” Piper added. “We’ve been plagued by snowstorms the whole trip.”

“Yes, I feel so close to all of you now!” Khione said. “Once you made it past Omaha, I decided to asked Lycaon to track you down so Jason could die here, at the Wolf House.”

Khione smiled at me. The electricity around me turned cold for a second. “You see, Jason, your blood spilled on this sacred ground will taint it for generations. Your demigod brethren will be outraged, especially when they find the bodies of these two from Camp Half-Blood. They’ll believe the Greeks have conspired with giants. It will be … delicious.”

Piper and Leo didn’t seem to understand what she was saying. But I did. My memories were returning enough for me to realize how dangerously effective Khione’s plan could be.

“You’ll set demigods against demigods,” I said. I could see it before me: purple t-shirts against orange, Reyna and Annabeth at odds.

“It’s so easy!” said Khione. “As I told you, I only encourage what you would do anyway.”

“But why?” Piper spread her hands. “Khione, you’ll tear the world apart. The giants will destroy everything. You don’t want that. Call off your monsters. ”

Khione hesitated, then laughed. “Your persuasive powers are improving, girl. But I am a goddess. You can’t charm-speak me. We wind gods are creatures of chaos! I’ll overthrow Aeolus and let the storms run free. If we destroy the mortal world, all the better! They never honored me, even in Greek times. Humans and their talk of global warming. Pah! I’ll cool them down quickly enough. When we retake the ancient places, I will cover the Acropolis in snow.”

“The ancient places.” Leo’s eyes widened. “That’s what Enceladus meant about destroy the roots of the gods. He meant Greece.”

“You could join me, son of Hephaestus,” Khione said. “I know you find me beautiful. It would be enough for my plan if these other two were to die. Reject that ridiculous destiny the Fates have given you. Live and be my champion, instead. Your skills would be quite useful.”

Leo looked stunned. He glanced behind him, like Khione might be talking to somebody else. For a second I was worried. Could Khione charmspeak, too?

Then Leo laughed so hard, he doubled over. “Yeah, join you. Right. Until you get bored of me and turn me into a Leosicle? Lady, nobody messes with my dragon and gets away with it. I can’t believe I thought you were hot.”

Khione’s face turned red. “Hot? You dare insult me? I am cold, Leo Valdez. Very, very cold.”

She shot a blast of wintry sleet at the demigods, but Leo held up his hand. A wall of fire roared to life in front of us, and the snow dissolved in a steamy cloud.

Leo grinned. “See, lady, that’s what happens to snow in Texas. It—freaking—melts.”

Khione hissed. “Enough of this. Hera is failing. Porphyrion is rising. Kill the demigods. Let them be our king’s first meal!”

We raised our weapons – hammer, dagger, spear – and the monsters charged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soo sorry I've been absent for so long! I haven't had internet for almost a month, I swear I haven't forgotten to keep writing! Thank you so much for reading this far, I promise there will be more soon!


	20. Lightning against lightning

A wolf launched itself at me. I stepped back and swung my spear into the beast’s snout with a satisfying crack. Maybe only silver could kill it, but good old-fashioned imperial gold could still give it a Tylenol headache. (Don’t ask how I knew that it was imperial gold. I just did.)

I turned toward the sound of hooves and saw a storm spirit horse bearing down on me. Good. Wind I could control. I concentrated and summoned the wind.

Just before the spirit could trample me, I launched myself into the air, grabbed the horse’s smoky neck, and pirouetted onto its back. The storm spirit reared. It tried to shake me, then tried to dissolve into mist to lose me; but somehow I stayed on. I willed the horse to remain in solid form, and the horse seemed unable to refuse. I could feel it fighting against me. I could sense its raging thoughts—complete chaos straining to break free. It took all of my willpower to impose my own wishes and bring the horse under control. I thought about Aeolus, overseeing thousands and thousands of spirits like this, some much worse. No wonder the Master of the Winds had gone a little mad after centuries of that pressure. But I had only one spirit to master, and I _had_ to win.

“You’re mine now,” I said.

The horse bucked, but I held fast. Its mane flickered as it circled around the empty pool, its hooves causing miniature thunderstorms —tempests—whenever they touched.

“Tempest?” I said. “Is that your name?”

The horse spirit shook its mane, evidently pleased to be recognized.

“Fine,” I said. “Now, let’s fight.”

I charged into battle, swinging my spear, knocking aside wolves and plunging straight through other _venti_. Tempest was a strong spirit, and every time he plowed through one of his brethren, he discharged so much electricity, the other spirit vaporized into a harmless cloud of mist.

Through the chaos, I caught glimpses of my friends. Piper was surrounded by Earthborn, but she seemed to be holding her own. She was literally glowing, I guess with Aphrodite’s blessing, and the Earthborn stared at her in awe, forgetting that they were supposed to kill her. They’d lower their clubs and watch dumbfounded as she smiled and charged them. They’d smile back—until she sliced them apart with her dagger, and they melted into mounds of mud.

Leo had taken on Khione herself. While fighting a goddess should’ve been suicide, Leo was the right man for the job. She kept summoning ice daggers to throw at him, blasts of winter air, tornadoes of snow. Leo burned through all of it. His whole body flickered with red tongues of flame like he’d been doused with gasoline. He advanced on the goddess, using two silver-tipped ball-peen hammers to smash any monsters that got in his way.

Leo was the only reason we were still alive. His fiery aura was heating up the whole courtyard, countering Khione’s winter magic. Without him, we would’ve been frozen like the Hunters long ago. Wherever Leo went, ice melted off the stones. Even Thalia started to defrost a little when Leo stepped near her.

Khione slowly backed away. Her expression went from enraged to shocked to slightly panicked as Leo got closer.

I was running out of enemies. Wolves lay in dazed heaps. Some slunk away into the ruins, yelping from their wounds. Piper stabbed the last Earthborn, who toppled to the ground in a pile of sludge. I rode Tempest through the last ventus, breaking it into vapor. Then I wheeled around and saw Leo bearing down on the goddess of snow.

“You’re too late,” Khione snarled. “He’s awake! And don’t think you’ve won anything here, demigods. Hera’s plan will never work. You’ll be at each other’s throats before you can ever stop us.”

Leo set his hammers ablaze and threw them at the goddess, but she turned into snow—a white powdery image of herself. Leo’s hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush.

Piper was breathing hard, but she smiled up at me. “Nice horse.”

Tempest reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. A complete show-off.

Then I heard a cracking sound behind me. The melting ice on Juno’s cage sloughed off in a curtain of slush, and the goddess called, “Oh, don’t mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!”

I dismounted and told Tempest to stay put. Leo pulled back his fire. Piper slashed the last Earthborn. We all jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.

Leo frowned. “Uh, _Tía_ Callida, are you getting shorter?”

“No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!”

As much as I disliked Juno, the scene inside the cage made my insides turn. Not only was Juno sinking, the ground was rising around her like water in a tank. Liquid rock had already covered her shins.

“The giant wakes!” Juno warned. “You only have seconds!”

“On it,” Leo said. “Piper, I need your help. Talk to the cage.”

“What?” she said.

“Talk to it. Use everything you’ve got. Convince Gaea to sleep. Lull her into a daze. Just slow her down, try to get the tendrils to loosen while I—”

“Right!” Piper cleared her throat and said, “Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Boy, I’m tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?”

The more she talked, the more confident she sounded. I felt my own eyes getting heavy, and I had to force myself not to focus on her words. It seemed to have some effect on the cage. The mud was rising more slowly. The tendrils seemed to soften just a little—becoming more like tree root than rock. Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt. How it fit in there, I had no idea. Then Leo looked at the cord and grunted in frustration.

“I don’t have anywhere to plug it in!”

The spirit horse Tempest jumped into the pit and whinnied.

“Really?” I asked.

Tempest dipped his head and trotted over to Leo. Leo looked dubious, but he held up the plug, and a breeze whisked it into the horse’s flank. Lighting sparked, connecting with the prongs of the plug, and the circular saw whirred to life.

“Sweet!” Leo grinned. “Your horse comes with AC outlets!”

On the other side of the pool, the giant’s spire crumbled with a sound like a tree snapping in half. Its outer sheath of tendrils exploded from the top down, raining stone and wood shards as the giant shook himself free and climbed out of the earth.

I hadn’t thought anything could be scarier than Enceladus.

I was wrong.

Porphyrion was even taller, and even more ripped. He didn’t radiate heat, or show any signs of breathing fire, but there was something more terrible about him—a kind of strength, even magnetism, as if the giant were so huge and dense he had his own gravitational field.

Like Enceladus, the giant king was humanoid from the waist up, clad in bronze armor, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon’s legs; but his skin was the color of lima beans. His hair was green as summer leaves, braided in long locks and decorated with weapons—daggers, axes, and full size swords, some of them bent and bloody—maybe trophies taken from demigods eons before. When the giant opened his eyes, they were blank white, like polished marble. He took a deep breath.

“Alive!” he bellowed. “Praise to Gaea!”

I made a heroic little whimpering sound he hoped his friends couldn’t hear. If any demigod could solo this guy, it wasn’t me. Porphyrion could lift mountains. He could crush me with one finger.

_Oh, well_ , I thought. _If I survive this, Rey can call me an idiot for the rest of eternity._

“Leo,” I said.

“Huh?” Leo’s mouth was wide open. Even Piper seemed dazed.

“You guys keep working,” I said. “Get Juno free!”

“What are you going to do?” Piper asked. “You can’t seriously—”

“Entertain a giant?” I said. “I’ve got no choice.”

“Excellent!” the giant roared as I approached. “An appetizer! Who are you—Hermes? Ares?”

I thought about going with that idea, and then forgot about it. The gods weren’t here. I was.

“I’m Jason Grace,” I said. “Son of Jupiter.”

Those white eyes bored into me. Behind me, Leo’s circular saw whirred, and Piper talked to the cage in soothing tones, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed. “Outstanding!” He looked up at the cloudy night sky. “So, Zeus, you sacrifice a son to me? The gesture is appreciated, but it will not save you.”

The sky didn’t even rumble. No help from above. I was on my own. I hit the floor with the bottom of my spear. I was so tired I could sleep for days, but that didn’t matter now. I had to buy Leo and Piper some time, and I couldn’t do that if I followed my primal instinct to fly away as fast as I could.

It was time to act a whole lot more confident than I felt. I gripped the spear, and its name came to me; _Fulguris_ , the lightning that starts the storm.

“If you knew who I was,” I yelled up at the giant, “you’d be worried about me, not my father. I hope you enjoyed your two and a half minutes of rebirth, giant, because I’m going to send you right back to Tartarus.”

The giant’s eyes narrowed. He planted one foot outside the pool and crouched to get a better look at his opponent.

“So … we’ll start by boasting, will we? Just like old times! Very well, demigod. I am Porphyrion, king of the giants, son of Gaea. In olden times, I rose from Tartarus, the abyss of my father, to challenge the gods. To start the war, I stole Zeus’s queen.” He grinned at the goddess’s cage. “Hello, Hera.”

“My husband destroyed you once, monster!” Juno said. “He’ll do it again!” “But he didn’t, my dear! Zeus wasn’t powerful enough to kill me. He had to rely on a puny demigod to help, and even then, we almost won. This time, we will complete what we started. Gaea is waking. She has provisioned us with many fine servants. Our armies will shake the earth—and we will destroy you at the roots.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Juno said, but she was weakening. I could hear it in her voice. Piper kept whispering to the cage, and Leo kept sawing, but the earth was still rising inside her prison, covering her up to her waist.

“Oh, yes,” the giant said. “The Titans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaea is wiser and more patient. And we, her greatest children, are much, much stronger than Kronos. We know how to kill you Olympians once and for all. You must be dug up completely like rotten trees—your eldest roots torn out and burned.”

The giant frowned at Piper and Leo, as if he’d just noticed them working at the cage. I stepped forward and yelled to get back Porphyrion’s attention.

“You said a demigod killed you,” I shouted. “How, if we’re so puny?”

“Ha! You think I would explain it to you? I was created to be Zeus’s replacement, born to destroy the lord of the sky. I shall take his throne. I shall take his wife—or, if she will not have me, I will let the earth consume her life force. What you see before you, child, is only my weakened form. I will grow stronger by the hour, until I am invincible. But I am already quite capable of smashing you to a grease spot!”

He rose to his full height and held out his hand. A twenty-foot spear shot from the earth. He grasped it, then stomped the ground with his dragon’s feet. The ruins shook. All around the courtyard, monsters started to regather—storm spirits, wolves, and Earthborn, all answering the giant king’s call.

“Great,” Leo muttered. “We needed more enemies.”

“Hurry,” Juno said.

“I know!” Leo snapped.

“Go to sleep, cage,” Piper said. “Nice, sleepy cage. Yes, I’m talking to a bunch of earthen tendrils. This isn’t weird at all.”

Porphyrion raked his spear across the top of the ruins, destroying a chimney and spraying wood and stone across the courtyard. “So, child of Zeus! I have finished my boasting. Now it’s your turn. What were you saying about destroying me?”

I looked at the ring of monsters, waiting impatiently for their master’s order to tear us to shreds. Leo’s circular saw kept whirring, and Piper kept talking, but it seemed hopeless. Juno’s cage was almost completely filled with earth.

“I’m the son of Jupiter!” I shouted, like I’d done ten thousand times against much less scary monsters. Just for effect, I summoned the winds, rising a few feet off the ground. “I’m a child of Rome, consul to demigods, praetor of the Twelfth Legion.” I didn’t know quite what he was saying, but I rattled off the words with the practice of years. I held out my arms, showing the tattoo of the eagle and SPQR, and to my surprise the giant seemed to recognize it. For a moment, Porphyrion actually looked uneasy.

“I slew the Trojan sea monster,” I continued. “I toppled the black throne of Saturn, and destroyed the Titan Krios with my own hands. And now I’m going to destroy you, Porphyrion, and feed you to your own wolves.”

“Wow, dude,” Leo muttered. “You been eating red meat?”

I launched myself at the giant, determined to tear him apart.

The idea of fighting a forty-foot-tall immortal with a spear smaller than its pinky finger was so ridiculous, even the giant seemed surprised.

Half flying, half leaping, I landed on the giant’s scaly reptilian knee and climbed up the giant’s arm before Porphyrion even realized what had happened. _Fulguris_ cracked with lightning, channeling all the energy of my crazy brain. Memories kept flooding back to me, but instead of staying inside me, they charged the spear and sent tendrils of thousands of volts through Porphyrion’s skin.

“You dare?” the giant bellowed. I reached his shoulders, ducking to avoid the giant’s weapon-filled braids. I yelled, “Camp Jupiter!” and drove _Fulguris_ into the nearest convenient target—the giant’s massive ear. Lightning streaked out of the sky and hit my spear, throwing me free and launching _Fulguris_ out of my reach.

I rolled when I hit the ground, and summoned the winds to bring me back my spear.

When I looked up, the giant was staggering. His hair was on fire, and the side of his face was blackened from lightning. _Fulguris_ had torn down in his ear. Golden ichor ran down his jaw. The weapons on his braids sparked and smoldered. Black smoke rose from his hair.

Porphyrion almost fell. The circle of monsters let out a collective growl and moved forward—wolves and ogres fixing their eyes on me.

“No!” Porphyrion yelled. He regained his balance and glared at me. His eyes were creepy as hell, but I stood my ground. “I will kill him myself.”

The giant raised his spear and it began to glow. “You want to play with lightning, boy? You forget. I am the bane of Zeus. I was created to destroy your father, which means I know exactly what will kill you.”

Something in Porphyrion’s voice told me he wasn’t bluffing. I shivered. The sky rumbled, and I knew what was going to happen a millisecond before it did. I called the wind around me, but forced it to stay still. _Not yet_.

The pressure went down so quickly my ears popped, and it took all my willpower not to fall to the ground. A burst of lightning shot down from the sky, bigger and darker than my father’s Master Bolt, silencing every other sound in the valley. It hit Porphyrion’s spear, and he threw it at me, a gigantic deadly charge of electricity, shooting tendrils at a fifteen feet radius.

_Now!_ The strongest wind I’d ever felt pulled me backwards, throwing me away from the pool and crashing me against a ruined wall. I hit the burnt wood with a yelp, and found myself at the other side of it, out of air and out of weapons. My arms and my chest stung from the weakest shots of Porphyrion’s spear, but I was alive. I’d dodged his attack.

The floor shook. Once, twice. He was coming to find me. I got up on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I would not die hidden behind a lump of bricks and wood.

I stood up, and found Porphyrion’s eyes fixed on me. He was smiling, and his smile was the stuff of nightmares. He raised his spear again.

“Got it!” Leo yelled.

“Sleep!” Piper said, so forcefully, the nearest wolves fell to the ground and began snoring.

The stone and wood cage crumbled. Leo had sawed through the base of the thickest tendril and apparently cut off the cage’s connection to Gaea. The tendrils turned to dust. The mud around Juno disintegrated. The goddess grew in size, glowing with power.

“Yes!” she said. She threw off her black robes to reveal a white gown, her arms bedecked with golden jewelry. Her face was both terrible and beautiful, and a golden crown glowed in her long black hair. “Now I shall have my revenge!”

Porphyrion backed away. He said nothing, but he gave me one last look of hatred. His message was clear: _Another time_. Then he slammed his spear against the earth, and the giant disappeared into the ground like he’d dropped down a chute.

Around the courtyard, monsters began to panic and retreat, but there was no escape for them.

Juno – no, Hera – glowed brighter. She shouted, “Cover your eyes, my heroes!”

But I was too much in shock. I understood too late.

I watched as Hera turned into a supernova, exploding in a ring of force that vaporized every monster instantly. I fell, light searing into my mind, and my last thought was that my body was burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally gave a name to Jason's sword/spear! I know it says IVLIVS on the coin, but I always thought it was because it's a roman coin, so it has the name of a ruler on it. And yes, he's definitely keeping it, just like Percy with Riptide!


	21. Home, sort of

The first thing I remember is the darkness. Seriously, it was so pitch black that it didn’t matter whether my eyes were open or not.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, if at least I knew where I was.

But there were no clues. I couldn’t hear a sound. Not even my own breathing or my heartbeat. I couldn’t feel a ground beneath me, or air around me. I wasn’t cold, and I wasn’t warm either.

I was completely alone. I tried yelling, but I couldn’t make a sound. There was no ground for me to walk on, and no wind that I could control. I wasn’t even floating in a limbo. I just existed, like a speck of dust in a gigantic void.

I racked my mind, trying to think. How had I ended there? I had been… There had been… I couldn’t remember. I didn’t even remember my own name, and for some reason it was really frustrating. I screamed, flailing my arms about, I yelled and yelled and tried everything I could think of, but there was no fixing it. No sound came ut of my lips. No dormant memories comforted me. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t remember.

I’m not sure how long things stayed like that. Seconds, perhaps, or maybe hours. It’s hard to count the time when time doesn’t exist. At some point I got tired, and tried to rest. That at least I could do.

That’s when I started hearing voices.

_Jason!_

I jolted. I knew that word. That was my name.

I was Jason Grace.

_Jason!_

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was outside, and it was inside my head.

“Where are you?” I called, but I couldn’t hear my words.

_It’s no use, child_ , said another voice.

What did that mean? I could hear it. I could answer. What was happening to me?

Another voice, arguing with the second one.

_This is your fault! Do something!_

_Do not address me that way, girl. I am the queen—_

_Fix him!_

_I did warn him. I would never intentionally hurt the boy. He was to be my champion. I told them to close their eyes before I revealed my true form._

True form. That reminded me of something. A blinding light flashed under my eyes, and I remembered burning.

_Um…_ _True form is bad, right? So why did you do it?_

Whoever this queen was, she was really mad at the other three voices.

_I unleashed my power to help you, fool! I became pure energy so I could disintegrate the monsters, restore this place, and even save these miserable Hunters from the ice._

Hunters. That was an important word. One of these voices was a Hunter. I wasn’t sure of how I knew, but it was nice knowing something.

_But mortals can’t look upon you in that form! You’ve killed him!_

Killed me? Was I dead? That would explain a few things, but I had the nagging feeling that you were supposed to go somewhere after you died. I almost had the name. Right at the tip of my tongue.

_That’s what our prophecy meant. Death unleash, through Hera’s rage. Come on, lady. You’re a goddess. Do some voodoo magic on him! Bring him back._

Hera. Goddess. Queen. I did know her. But that name wasn’t right. And if I was dead, why could I hear them speaking?

_He’s breathing!_ , said the first voice.

The second she said that, I realized that I was. But how? I hadn’t been breathing before. I focused on the voice. It was magnetic. It was so powerful, that I knew it could break through this darkness.

_Impossible,_ said the queen. _I wish it were true, child, but no mortal has ever—_

_Jason, listen to me. You can do this. Come back. You’re going to be fine._

I was trying. I really was, but I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t see. I was so, so close…

_Healing is not a power of Aphrodite. Even I cannot fix this, girl. His mortal spirit—_

_Jason_.

I held on to that voice like a lifeline. She was right, I could do this. I would do this. I just needed…

_Wake up._

I gasped, and my eyes flew open. All the memories I’d recovered during our quest rushed back to me in a hurricane.

I was alive.

I laid on the ground, my head on a coat, and I could see steam floating out of my skin. Piper held my hand. Thalia sat at my head, her hand on my forehead. Leo knelt at my other side. Their eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them.

“What—what happened?” It was good to see my voice worked again.

“Impossible!” Juno said.

Piper wrapped me in a hug.

“Crushing me,” I groaned.

“Sorry.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.

Thalia squeezed my shoulders, and checked my temperature again. “How do you feel?”

“Hot,” I muttered. Now that I could feel, the heat seemed even worse. “Mouth is dry. And I saw something… really terrible.”

“That was Hera,” my sister grumbled. “Her Majesty, the Loose Cannon.”

“That’s it, Thalia Grace,” said the goddess. “I will turn you into an aardvark, so help me—”

“Stop it, you two,” Piper said. Amazingly, they both shut up.

I looked around us. Juno stood next to our little group in her simple black robes and shawl, and the aftereffects of her supernova were very clear. Every vestige of winter was gone from the valley. No signs of battle, either. The monsters had been vaporized. The ruins had been restored to what they were before—still ruins, but with no evidence that they’d been overrun by a horde of wolves, storm spirits, and six-armed ogres. Even the Hunters had been revived. Most waited at a respectful distance in the meadow, shooting looks at us once in a while.

Piper and Leo helped me to my feet. Leo even insisted that I take the last of nectar from our supplies – “you were just dead, man, you need an oil change” – and kept a grip on me – “don’t be heroic, you look like you’re about to collapse” – just in case. For once, I let them take care of me. If I couldn’t be vulnerable with my friends, then there was no hope for me.

“Now …” Piper faced Thalia and Juno. “Hera—Your Majesty—we couldn’t have rescued you without the Hunters. And Thalia, you never would’ve seen Jason again—we wouldn’t have met him—if it weren’t for Hera. You two make nice, because we’ve got bigger problems.”

They both glared at her, and for three long seconds, I wasn’t sure which one of them was going to kill her first.

Finally Thalia grunted. “You’ve got spirit, Piper.” She pulled a silver card from her parka and tucked it into the pocket of Piper’s snowboarding jacket. “You ever want to be a Hunter, call me. We could use you.”

Juno crossed her arms. “Fortunately for this Hunter, you have a point, daughter of Aphrodite.”

She assessed Piper, as if seeing her clearly for the first time. “You wondered, Piper, why I chose you for this quest, why I didn’t reveal your secret in the beginning, even when I knew Enceladus was using you. I must admit, until this moment I was not sure. Something told me you would be vital to the quest. Now I see I was right. You’re even stronger than I realized. And you are correct about the dangers to come. We must work together.”

Piper’s face turned bright red. She didn’t have a chance to respond to Juno’s compliment, because Leo stepped in.

“Yeah,” he said, “I don’t suppose that Porphyrion guy just melted and died, huh?”

“No,” Juno agreed. “By saving me, and saving this place, you prevented Gaea from waking. You have bought us some time. But Porphyrion has risen. He simply knew better than to stay here, especially since he has not yet regained his full power. Giants can only be killed by a combination of god and demigod, working together. Once you freed me—”

“He ran away,” I said. “But to where?”

Juno didn’t answer, but I saw Piper and Thalia exchange a grim look.

“I need to find Annabeth,” Thalia said before I could ask what that was about. “She has to know what’s happened here.”

“Thalia …” I gripped her hand. She couldn’t leave that fast. Not again. “We never got to talk about this place, or—”

“I know.” Her expression softened. “I lost you here once. I don’t want to leave you again. But we’ll meet soon. I’ll rendezvous with you back at Camp Half-Blood.” She glanced at Juno. “You’ll see them there safely? It’s the least you can do.”

“It’s not your place to tell me—”

“Queen Hera,” Piper interceded.

The goddess sighed. “Fine. Yes. Just off with you, Hunter!”

Thalia gave me a hug and said her good-byes. She ran out of the Wolf House followed by the rest of the Hunters. I tried not to show how much I hated it, and failed dramatically.

When the Hunters were gone, the courtyard seemed strangely quiet. The dry reflecting pool showed no sign of the earthen tendrils that had brought back the giant king or imprisoned Juno. The night sky was clear and starry. The wind rustled in the redwoods. It looked like a normal night in the Wolf House. I thought of Lupa and her wolves, that would soon come back here to restart their mission.

“Jason, what happened to you here?” Piper asked, her voice soft. “I mean—I know your mom abandoned you here. But you said it was sacred ground for demigods. Why? What happened after you were on your own?”

I shook my head. Most of it was unclear. “It’s still murky. The wolves …”

“You were given a destiny,” Juno said. “You were given into my service.”

I tried really hard not to yell at the queen of the heavens. “Because you forced my mom to do that. You couldn’t stand knowing Jupiter had two children with my mom. Knowing that he’d fallen for her twice. I was the price you demanded for leaving the rest of my family alone. ”

“It was the right choice for you as well, Jason,” Juno insisted. “The second time your mother managed to snare Zeus’s affections, it was because she imagined him in a different aspect—the aspect of Jupiter. Never before had this happened—two children, Greek and Roman, born into the same family. You had to be separated from Thalia. This is where all demigods of your kind start their journey.”

“Of his kind?” Piper asked.

“She means Roman,” I said. “Demigods are left here. We meet the she-wolf goddess, Lupa, the same immortal wolf that raised Romulus and Remus.”

Juno nodded. “And if you are strong enough, you live.”

“But …” Leo looked mystified. “What happened after that? I mean, Jason never made it to camp.”

“Not to Camp Half-Blood, no,” Juno agreed.

Piper’s expression was half dread, half wonder. “You went somewhere else. That’s where you’ve been all these years. Somewhere else for demigods—but where?”

Wouldn’t I have liked to know that. I turned to the goddess. “The memories are coming back, but not the location. You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“No,” Juno said. “That is part of your destiny, Jason. You must find your own way back. But when you do … you will unite two great powers. You will give us hope against the giants, and more importantly—against Gaea herself.”

“You want us to help you,” I said, “but you’re holding back information.”

“Giving you answers would make those answers invalid,” Juno said. “That is the way of the Fates. You must forge your own path for it to mean anything. Already, you three have surprised me. I would not have thought it possible …” The goddess shook her head. “Suffice to say, you have performed well, demigods. But this is only the beginning. Now you must return to Camp Half-Blood, where you will begin planning for the next phase.”

“Which you won’t tell us about,” I grumped. “And I suppose you destroyed my nice storm spirit horse, so we’ll have to walk home?”

Juno waved aside the question. “Storm spirits are creatures of chaos. I did not destroy that one, though I have no idea where he went, or whether you’ll see him again. But there is an easier way home for you. As you have done me a great service, so I can help you—at least this once. Farewell, demigods, for now.”

The world turned upside down, and I almost blacked out.

When I could see straight again, I was back at camp, in the dining pavilion, in the middle of dinner. We were standing on the Aphrodite cabin’s table, and Piper had one foot in Drew’s pizza. Sixty campers rose at once, gawking at us in astonishment.

Whatever Juno had done to shoot us across the country, it wasn’t good for my stomach. I could barely control my nausea. Leo wasn’t so lucky. He jumped off the table, ran to the nearest bronze brazier, and threw up in it—which was probably not a great burnt offering for the gods.

“Jason?” Chiron trotted forward. No doubt the old centaur had seen thousands of years’ worth of weird stuff, but even he looked totally flabbergasted. “What—How—?”

The Aphrodite campers stared up at us with their mouths open. I figured we must look awful.

“Hi,” Piper said, managing to sound casual. “We’re back.”

I don’t remember much about the rest of the night. We told our story and answered a million questions from the other campers, but finally Chiron saw how tired we were and ordered us to bed.

It felt so good to sleep on a real mattress, and I was so exhausted, I crashed immediately, which spared me any worry about what it would be like returning to Camp Half-Blood.

I had dreams again, but this time they were better.

I remembered riding on an elephant, _Fulguris_ on one hand and a banner in the other, while another boy in a purple t-shirt and golden armor held the reins. He laughed, shaking his dark curls, and when he laughed up at me I could see his crooked teeth.

“Come on, Bobby!” I said in my memory. “We’ve gotta go get the others!”

Bobby hurried the elephant, and we advanced through the rival army, celebrating our victory.

I remembered a morning, and a boy about my age tripping over his purple toga, falling to the ground in a bundle of fabric and boy. Beside me, two girls laughed so hard one of them even fell back on her bed.

“Need help, Dakota?” said one of them.

“Shut up, Gwendolyn!” he grumped, getting back on his feet. “I can do this by myself- argh!”

He fell again, and we doubled over with laughter.

I remembered a girl, brown curls and golden eyes, holding a ridiculously long sword and looking at me with doubtful eyes.

“I know I’m not in the cavalry, but-”

“Hazel, it’s your weapon. Mine isn’t reglementary either,” I said, twirling _Fulguris_ between two fingers. “Who knows, maybe you’ll end up being with our best riders! Or you’ll become friends with a pegasus.”

“So you don’t think I should take Amihan’s advice?”

“I think that it’s your choice. You can fight just fine with a spatha if you know how.”

Hazel gripped the hilt of the spatha, and sheathed it in a swift movement.

I woke up in my bunk in Cabin one, feeling reinvigorated. The sun came through the windows along with a pleasant breeze. It might’ve been spring instead of winter. Birds sang. Monsters howled in the woods. Breakfast smells wafted from the dining pavilion—bacon, pancakes, and all sorts of wonderful things.

It wasn’t home, not yet. But it wasn’t bad at all.

I put on the Camp Half-Blood t-shirt, and looked down at the two purple shirts I had. The one I’d been wearing when I’d met Leo and Piper, and the one that Venus – no, Aphrodite – had given me. I made a decision.

I took the second t-shirt (no offence to Aphrodite, but it was in way worse shape than the other one) and cut off a strip of purple fabric, about as wide as my palm and as long as my arm, and I tied it under my hand, like a wristband. I might not be in Camp Jupiter, but hell if I wasn’t going to carry it with me.

I looked at myself: Greek t-shirt, Greek cabin, Roman band and Roman tattoos. Before, I’d thought that I was a ticking bomb. Now, I wasn’t so sure. I was just trying to go back home. Everything else felt too complicated.

I fixed my bed and left Cabin One behind me. It was time to start planning.

I passed by Cabin Ten on my way to the dining pavilion. The door was wide open, and Piper’s voice floated through it. Whoever she was rooting against, I felt sorry for them.

“You—” Drew spluttered inside the cabin “You ugly little witch! I’ve been here the longest. You can’t just—”

“Challenge you?” Piper said. “Sure, I can. Camp rules: I’ve been claimed by Aphrodite. I’ve completed a quest, which is one more than you’ve completed. If I feel I can do a better job, I can challenge you. Unless you just want to step down. Did I get all that right, Mitchell?”

“Just right, Piper.”

I grinned. Piper as the Aphrodite senior counselor. Now that would be fun.

“Step down?” Drew shrieked. “You’re crazy!”

There was a crash. A guy fell through the door in a cloud of pink and purple dust, and went back inside fast as light.

“A duel, then,” Piper said cheerfully. “If you don’t want to wait until noon, now is fine. You’ve turned this cabin into a dictatorship, Drew. Silena Beauregard knew better than that. Aphrodite is about love and beauty. Being loving. Spreading beauty. Good friends. Good times. Good deeds. Not just looking good. Silena made mistakes, but in the end she stood by her friends. That’s why she was a hero. I’m going to set things right, and I’ve got a feeling Mom will be on my side. Want to find out?”

There was silence inside the cabin. A second passed. Then two. I was about to go in to make sure that Drew didn’t do anything stupid like dueling Piper, when she finally answered.

“I … step down,” Drew grumbled. “But if you think I’m ever going to forget this, McLean—”

“Oh, I hope you won’t,” Piper said. “Now, run along to the dining pavilion, and explain to Chiron why we’re late. There’s been a change of leadership.”

I made myself scarce. The day looked amazing, and I was starving.

In the end, Cabin Ten wasn’t late for breakfast. They carried Piper all the way to the dining pavilion – barefoot and in her pajamas – raised on a couple of kids’ shoulders and cheering so loudly, you could’ve heard them from the Big House. Leo got Cabin Nine whistling at the spectacle. I gave her a double thumbs up, and she grinned at us. I’d never seen her so happy.

I didn’t get to talk to Leo or Piper until that afternoon. I’d been busy: I’d gotten a notebook from Chiron and started writing down everything that I remembered.

I wrote about the battle of Mount Othrys, titan Krios, my old praetor’s death. I drew my friends’ faces: Dakota, Gwen, Bobby, Hazel. Reyna, of course. I could even write down how much I missed Hazel, because she was an amazing painter, and I could have asked her for help. My drawings looked like a three year old’s scribbles. I wrote about the wolves, and I wrote about the fountain where I’d seen Reyna. I wrote the name of my home: Camp Jupiter. I wrote my sister’s story.

When I was done, I looked for a place to hide the notebook.

There were no closets inside Cabin One, but after searching for a while, I found a little door leading to a flight of stairs behind Zeus’ statue. I climbed up the steps.

The second floor looked like an observatory.

The high ceiling was made of glass, and pendant lights hung from the seams. At the far end of the room stood an antique chest of drawers and cabinets, and next to it someone had left a telescope. The cabinets were full to the brim with astronomy instruments: maps of the sky, an armillary sphere, two astronomical clocks, an octant. And those are just the ones that I recognized.

And at the bottom of a drawer, I found a diary, half-filled with sightings of stars and comets, and signed on the front page by “Molly Bailey, daughter of Zeus, February of 1939”.

I called the wind to help me. Not thirty seconds later, my bed was in the observatory, next to Molly’s telescope, and I had placed my notebook alongside her diary. Then I closed the door and went to train with the Hermes kids. My memories were in good hands.

I finally saw Piper after basketball with the Apollo kids. They were good, and I was still tired from the mission, but I survived. I ended on a bench with a spare basketball, watching Austin and Roland shoot hoops. Those guys had enough energy to power the entire camp.

Piper flopped down next to me on the bench. She’d just received a call from her dad in the Big House, and she looked like it had been as tiring as Medea.

“How did it go?” I asked.

It took her a second to focus on the question. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Fine.”

We watched the campers going back and forth. A couple of Demeter girls were playing tricks on Will Solace and another of the Apollo kids, Hayden, I think —making grass grow around their ankles as they shot baskets. Over at the camp store, Lupe and Cecil Markowitz were putting up a sign that read: flying shoes, slightly used, 50% off today! Arnold Beefcake was directing his siblings, who were lining Cabin Five with fresh barbed wire. The Hypnos cabin was snoring away. A normal day at camp.

“My dad’s staying out of the public eye for a while,” said Piper. “Coach Hedge is taking care of everything.”

She’d shown me a newspaper at lunch. Her dad’s mysterious return from nowhere had made the front page. His personal assistant Jane had been fired for covering up his disappearance and failing to notify the police. A new staff had been hired and personally vetted by Tristan McLean’s “life coach,” Gleeson Hedge. According to the paper, Mr. McLean claimed to have no memory of the last week, and the media was totally eating up the story. Some thought it was a clever marketing ploy for a movie—maybe McLean was going to play an amnesiac? Some thought he’d been kidnapped by terrorists, or rabid fans, or had heroically escaped from ransom seekers using his incredible King of Sparta fighting skills. Whatever the truth, Tristan McLean was more famous than ever.

“He’ll be fine, then,” I said. “The coach will make sure of it.”

“Yeah.” She managed a smile. “I can’t thank him enough. He’s going to stay in LA until my dad gets back on his feet, and then he’ll be back to help us. He’s even sent the Park Service in the Bay Area a new helicopter. Anonymously, of course. And that ranger pilot who helped us? She’s got a very lucrative offer to fly for my dad. And he’s hired Mellie to be my dad’s assistant.”

“Wait, really?”

“He doesn’t know that she’s a wind spirit, but we can trust that she won’t sell him to the giants like Jane did.”

She let out a breath. I could tell that she was stalling. I waited.

“My dad is…” she didn’t look at me. “He’s back to normal. He doesn’t remember Enceladus, or the fight, or…” she smiled a little. “He wants me to go home for Christmas.”

“Hey, that’s good. I’m sure that Coach Hedge and Mellie will make sure that he has time for you.”

“I know. I just- I feel so guilty. I erased his memories, and then I went and felt angry at Hera for taking yours, and-”

“Pipes, stop.” I passed an arm around her shoulders, half-hugged her. “Your dad is sane because of you. He’s safe, and he’s home, and you’re going to be with him every step of the way, until the both of you can talk about it. I know it sucks that you had to do that, but it doesn’t make you a bad person.”

She sighed. “So you’re not mad at me for taking his memories?”

“Not in the least.”

I yawned, and she disentangled from me. “Get any sleep?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “Dreams.”

“About your past?”

I nodded.

She didn’t push me, which I was thankful for. Everything I remembered felt fragile, like it would vanish if I talked about them. I spun my basketball.

“It’s complicated.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she promised. I wanted very much to believe her.

“Annabeth and Rachel are coming in for the meeting tonight. I should probably wait until then to explain …”

“Okay.” She plucked a blade of grass by her foot. Every trace of tiredness was gone from her. I guess, in the end, she had really liked that talk with her dad.

“You’re in a good mood,” I said. “How can you be so sure things will work out?”

“Because you’re going to lead us,” she said. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

I blinked. That was a lot of trust. “Dangerous thing to say.”

“I’m a dangerous girl.”

“That, I believe.”

I got up and brushed off my shorts. “Leo says he’s got something to show us out in the woods. You coming?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” She stood up. “Let’s go. We’ve got adventures to plan.”

I hadn’t expected Leo to take us to a limestone cliff in the middle of the forest, but then again, this was Leo. You had to learn to expect the unexpected.

Leo smiled nervously. “Here we go.”

He willed his hand to catch fire, and set it against the door. His cabinmates gasped.

“Leo!” Nyssa cried. “You’re a fire user!”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “I know.”

Jake Mason, who was out of his body cast but still on crutches, said, “Holy Hephaestus. That means—it’s so rare that—”

The massive stone door swung open, and everyone’s mouth dropped. Leo’s flaming hand seemed insignificant now. I was completely speechless, and I’d seen my fair share of amazing things lately.

There was a cavern inside the cliff, illuminated by electric fluorescents and wall-mounted torches. The whole place was the size of an airplane hangar, with endless worktables and storage cages, rows of garage-sized doors along either wall, and staircases that led up to a network of catwalks high above. Equipment was everywhere—hydraulic lifts, welding torches, hazard suits, air-spades, forklifts, plus something that looked suspiciously like a nuclear reaction chamber. Bulletin boards were covered with tattered, faded blueprints. And weapons, armor, shields—war supplies all over the place, a lot of them only partially finished.

The only one who didn’t look surprised was Chiron. The centaur knit his bushy eyebrows and stroked his beard, as if we were about to walk through a minefield. I saw Leo give him a nervous look, and then square his shoulders.

“Welcome to Bunker Nine,” he said. “C’mon in.”

I still couldn’t find any words while we toured the facility, and looks like nobody else did, because we were all quiet. Especially when we got to the center of the room.

Festus’s head was sitting on the central table, still battered and scorched from his final crash in Omaha. Leo went over to it and stroked the dragon’s forehead. “I’m sorry, Festus. But I won’t forget you.”

I put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Hephaestus brought it here for you?”

Leo nodded.

“But you can’t repair him,” I guessed.

“No way,” Leo said. “But the head is going to be reused. Festus will be going with us.”

Piper came over and frowned. “What do you mean?”

Before Leo could answer, Nyssa cried out, “Guys, look at this!”

She was standing at one of the worktables, flipping through a sketchbook—diagrams for hundreds of different machines and weapons.

“I’ve never seen anything like these,” Nyssa said. “There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus’ workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them all.”

“Who built this place?” Jake Mason said. “And why?”

Chiron stayed silent, but I focused on the wall map mounted on the wall. It showed Camp Half-Blood with a line of triremes in the Sound, catapults mounted in the hills around the valley, and spots marked for traps, trenches, and ambush sites.

“It’s a wartime command center,” Leo said. “The camp was attacked once, wasn’t it?”

“In the Titan War?” Piper asked.

Nyssa shook her head. “No. Besides, that map looks really old. The date … does that say 1864?”

We all turned to Chiron. The centaur’s tail swished fretfully. “This camp has been attacked many times,” he admitted. “That map is from the last Civil War.”

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one confused. The Hephaestus campers looked at each other and frowned.

“Civil War …” Piper said. “You mean the American Civil War, like a hundred and fifty years ago?”

“Yes and no,” Chiron said. “The two conflicts—mortal and demigod—mirrored each other, as they usually do in Western history. Look at any civil war or revolution from the fall of Rome onward, and it marks a time when demigods also fought one another. But that Civil War was particularly horrible. For American mortals, it is still their bloodiest conflict of all time—worse than their casualties in the two World Wars. For demigods, it was equally devastating. Even back then, this valley was Camp Half-Blood. There was a horrible battle in these woods lasting for days, with terrible losses on both sides.”

“Both sides,” Leo said. “You mean the camp split apart?”

“No,” I spoke up. “He means two different groups. Camp Half-Blood was one side in the war.”

“Who was the other?”, Leo asked.

Chiron glanced up at the tattered bunker 9 banner, as if remembering the day it was raised.

“The answer is dangerous,” he warned. “It is something I swore upon the River Styx never to speak of. After the American Civil War, the gods were so horrified by the toll it took on their children, that they swore it would never happen again. The two groups were separated. The gods bent all their will, wove the Mist as tightly as they could, to make sure the enemies never remembered each other, never met on their quests, so that bloodshed could be avoided. This map is from the final dark days of 1864, the last time the two groups fought. We’ve had several close calls since then. The nineteen sixties were particularly dicey. But we’ve managed to avoid another civil war—at least so far. Just as Leo guessed, this bunker was a command center for the Hephaestus cabin. In the last century, it has been reopened a few times, usually as a hiding place in times of great unrest. But coming here is dangerous. It stirs old memories, awakens the old feuds. Even when the Titans threatened last year, I did not think it worth the risk to use this place.”

Leo turned bright red. “Hey, look, this place found me. It was meant to happen. It’s a good thing.”

“I hope you’re right,” Chiron said.

“I am!” Leo pulled the old drawing we’d seen in Aeolus’ palace out of his pocket and spread it on the table for everyone to see. “There,” he said proudly. “Aeolus returned that to me. I drew it when I was five. That’s my destiny.”

Nyssa frowned. “Leo, it’s a crayon drawing of a boat.”

“Look.” He pointed at the largest schematic on the bulletin board—the blueprint showing a Greek trireme. They were exactly the same.

Slowly, the Hephaestus kids’ eyes widened as they compared the two designs. The number of masts and oars, even the decorations on the shields and sails were exactly the same as on Leo’s drawing.

“That’s impossible,” Nyssa said. “That blueprint has to be a century old at least.”

“‘Prophecy—Unclear—Flight,’” Jake Mason read from the notes on the blueprint. “It’s a diagram for a flying ship. Look, that’s the landing gear. And weaponry—Holy Hephaestus: rotating ballista, mounted crossbows, Celestial bronze plating. That thing would be one spankin’ hot war machine. Was it ever made?”

“Not yet,” Leo said. “Look at the masthead.”

There was no doubt—the figure at the front of the ship was the head of a dragon. A very particular dragon.

“Festus,” Piper said.

We all turned and looked at the dragon’s head sitting on the table.

“He’s meant to be our masthead,” Leo said. “Our good luck charm, our eyes at sea. I’m supposed to build this ship. I’m gonna call it the Argo II. And guys, I’ll need your help.”

“The Argo II.” Piper smiled. “After Jason’s ship.”

I wasn’t all that happy with it being ‘Jason’s ship’, but Leo needed my support now. “Leo’s right. That ship is just what we need for our journey.”

“What journey?” Nyssa said. “You just got back!”

Piper ran her fingers over the old crayon drawing. “We’ve got to confront Porphyrion, the giant king. He said he would destroy the gods at their roots. ”

“Indeed,” Chiron said. “Much of Rachel’s Great Prophecy is still a mystery to me, but one thing is clear. You three—Jason, Piper, and Leo—are among the seven demigods who must take on that quest. You must confront the giants in their homeland, where they are strongest. You must stop them before they can wake Gaea fully, before they destroy Mount Olympus.”

“Um …” Nyssa shifted. “You don’t mean Manhattan, do you?”

“No,” Leo said. “The original Mount Olympus. We have to sail to Greece.”

It took a few minutes for that to settle in. Then the Hephaestus campers started asking questions all at once. Who were the other four demigods? How long would it take to build the boat? Why didn’t everyone get to go to Greece?

“Heroes!” Chiron struck his hoof on the floor. “All the details are not clear yet, but Leo is correct. He will need your help to build the Argo II. It is perhaps the greatest project Cabin Nine has even undertaken, even greater than the bronze dragon.”

“It’ll take a year at least,” Nyssa guessed. “Do we have that much time?”

“You have six months at most,” Chiron said. “You should sail by summer solstice, when the gods’ power is strongest. Besides, we evidently cannot trust the wind gods, and the summer winds are the least powerful and easiest to navigate. You dare not sail any later, or you may be too late to stop the giants. You must avoid ground travel, using only air and sea, so this vehicle is perfect. Jason being the son of the sky god …”

His voice trailed off, but I figured Chiron was thinking about his missing student, Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon. He would’ve been good on this voyage, too.

Jake Mason turned to Leo. “Well, one thing’s for sure. You are now senior counselor. This is the biggest honor the cabin has ever had. Anyone object?”

Nobody did. All his cabinmates smiled at him, and Leo seemed frozen.

“It’s official, then,” Jake said. “You’re the man.”

For once, Leo was speechless. “Well,” he said at last, “if you guys elect me leader, you must be even crazier than I am. So let’s build a spankin’ hot war machine!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, only one chapter left! Thanks so so much for reading this far, you don't know how happy it makes me! I hope you've enjoyed it!


	22. Plans and more plans

I waited alone in Cabin One.

Annabeth and Rachel were due any minute for the head counselors’ meeting, and I needed time to think.

I was still having dreams, and even though most of them felt like home, I had a feeling that recurring nightmares were a habit for me. My memory was still foggy, but bits and pieces kept coming back, like drops falling out of a badly closed tap. The night Lupa had tested me at the Wolf House, to decide if I would be a pup or food. Then the long trip south to … I couldn’t remember. The day I’d gotten my tattoo. The day I’d been raised on a shield and proclaimed a praetor.

My memories of Camp Jupiter felt a little like the observatory: it was a wonderful place, but just like here, part of me was alone.

I tidied up Thalia’s old things, and put her pictures on the chest of drawers, inside my notebook. With Thalia’s photos and Molly’s diary, it was less lonely.

Downstairs, I sat on the floor, just like in my memory, and I missed the name of the boy that had appeared in it. I stared up at the frowning statue of Zeus, mighty and proud, but the statue didn’t scare me anymore. It just made me feel sad.

“I know you can hear me,” I said to the statue.

The statue said nothing. Its painted eyes seemed to stare at me.

“I wish I could talk with you in person,” I continued, “but I understand you can’t do that. The Roman gods don’t like to interact with mortals so much, and—well, you’re the king. You’ve got to set an example.”

More silence. I had hoped for something—a bigger than usual rumble of thunder, a bright light, a smile. No, never mind. A smile would’ve been creepy.

“I remember some things,” I said. The more I talked, the less self-conscious I felt. “I remember that it’s hard being a son of Jupiter. Everyone is always looking at me to be a leader, but I always feel alone. I guess you feel the same way up on Olympus. The other gods challenge your decisions. Sometimes you’ve got to make hard choices, and the others criticize you. And you can’t come to my aid like other gods might. You’ve got to keep me at a distance so it doesn’t look like you’re playing favorites. I guess I just wanted to say …”

I took a deep breath. “I understand all that. It’s okay. I’m going to try to do my best. I’ll try to make you proud. But I could really use some guidance, Dad. If there’s anything you can do—help me so I can help my friends. I’m afraid I’ll get them killed. I don’t know how to protect them.”

The back of my neck tingled. Someone was standing behind me. I turned and found a woman in a black hooded robe, with a goatskin cloak over her shoulders and a sheathed Roman sword—a gladius—in her hands.

“Juno,” I said.

She pushed back her hood. “Your father has already sent you guidance, Jason. He sent you Piper and Leo. They’re not just your responsibility. They are also your friends. Listen to them, and you will do well.”

“Did Jupiter send you here to tell me that?”

“No one sends me anywhere, hero,” she said. “I am not a messenger.”

“But you got me into this. Why did you send me to this camp?”

“I think you know,” Juno said. “An exchange of leaders was necessary. It was the only way to bridge to gap.”

“I didn’t agree to it.”

“No. But Zeus gave your life to me, and I am helping you fulfill your destiny.”

I tried to control my anger. I was all in for helping my friends, but all this ‘you belong to me’ talk was creepy at best.

“You’re not giving me all my memories,” I said. “Even though you promised.”

“Most will return in time,” Juno said. “But you must find your own way back. You need these next months with your new friends, your new home. You’re gaining their trust. By the time you sail in your ship, you will be a leader at this camp. And you will be ready to be a peacemaker between two great powers.”

“What about my friends in Camp Jupiter? Will they think that I’m dead?”

“You are not to be back to Camp Jupiter until you can remember its location,” Juno said. “As for the rest, it’s you choice.”

“What if you’re not telling the truth?” I asked. “What if you’re doing this to cause another civil war?”

Juno’s expression was impossible to read—amusement? Disdain? Affection? Possibly all three. As much as she appeared human, I knew she was not. I could still see that blinding light—the true form of the goddess that had seared itself into my brain. She was Juno and Hera. She existed in many places at once. Her reasons for doing something were never simple.

“I am the goddess of family,” she said. “My family has been divided for too long.”

“They divided us so we don’t kill each other,” I said. “That seems like a pretty good reason.”

“The prophecy demands that we change. The giants will rise. Each can only be killed by a god and demigod working together. Those demigods must be the seven greatest of the age. As it stands, they are divided between two places. If we remain divided, we cannot win. Gaea is counting on this. You must unite the heroes of Olympus and sail together to meet the giants on the ancient battlegrounds of Greece. Only then will the gods be convinced to join you. It will be the most dangerous quest, the most important voyage, ever attempted by the children of the gods.”

I looked up again at the glowering statue of my father.

“It’s not fair,” I said. “I could ruin everything.”

“You could,” Juno agreed. “But gods need heroes. We always have.”

“Even you? I thought you hated heroes.” Especially children of Jupiter, but I didn’t say that.

The goddess gave me a dry smile. “I have that reputation. But if you want the truth, Jason, I often envy other gods their mortal children. You demigods can span both worlds. I think this helps your godly parents—even Jupiter, curse him—to understand the mortal world better than I.”

Juno sighed so unhappily that despite my anger, I almost felt sorry for her.

“I am the goddess of marriage,” she said. “It is not in my nature to be faithless. I have only two godly children—Ares and Hephaestus—both of whom are disappointments. I have no mortal heroes to do my bidding, which is why I am so often bitter toward demigods—Heracles, Aeneas, all of them. But it is also why I favored the first Jason, a pure mortal, who had no godly parent to guide him. And why I am glad Zeus gave you to me. You will be my champion, Jason. You will be the greatest of heroes, and bring unity to the demigods, and thus to Olympus.”

Great. I tried to steer myself. Sure, so Juno was making this about me, but I wouldn’t be alone. I’d have Piper and Leo, and probably Annabeth’s boyfriend too, and if Camp Half-Blood was anything to go by, he must be something big. We even had a patron goddess looking out for us, which had to count for something, even if she seemed a little untrustworthy.

“And if we fail?” I asked.

“Great victory requires great risk,” she admitted. “Fail, and there will be bloodshed like we have never seen. Demigods will destroy one another. The giants will overrun Olympus. Gaea will wake, and the earth will shake off everything we have built over five millennia. It will be the end of us all.”

“Great. Just great.”

Someone pounded on the cabin doors. Juno pulled her hood back over her face.

“We will speak again. Like it or not, Jason, I am your sponsor, and your link to Olympus. We need each other.”

The goddess vanished as the doors creaked open, and Piper walked in.

“Annabeth and Rachel are here,” she said. “Chiron has summoned the council.”

The council was nothing like I’d imagined. For one thing, it was in the Big House rec room, around a Ping-Pong table, and one of the satyrs was serving nachos and sodas. Somebody had brought Seymour the leopard head in from the living room and hung him on the wall. Every once in a while, a counselor would toss him a Snausage.

I looked around the room and tried to remember everyone’s name. Thankfully, Leo and Piper were sitting next to me—it was their first meeting as senior counselors. Clarisse, leader of the Ares cabin, had her boots on the table, but nobody seemed to care. Clovis from Hypnos cabin was snoring in the corner while Butch from Iris cabin was seeing how many pencils he could fit in Clovis’s nostrils. Travis Stoll from Hermes was holding a lighter under a Ping-Pong ball to see if it would burn, and Will Solace from Apollo was absently wrapping and unwrapping an Ace bandage around his wrist. The counselor from Hecate cabin, Lou Ellen something-or-other, was playing “got-your-nose” with Miranda Gardiner from Demeter, except that Lou Ellen really had magically disconnected Miranda’s nose, and Miranda was trying to get it back.

I had hoped Thalia would show. She’d promised, after all—but she was nowhere to be seen. Chiron had told me not to worry about it. Thalia often got sidetracked fighting monsters or running quests for Artemis, and she would probably arrive soon. But still, I worried.

Rachel Dare, the oracle, sat next to Chiron at the head of the table. She was wearing her Clarion Academy school uniform dress, which seemed a bit odd, but she smiled at me.

Annabeth didn’t look so relaxed. She wore armor over her camp clothes, with her knife at her side and her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. As soon as I walked in, she fixed me with an expectant look, as if she were trying to extract information out of me by sheer willpower. I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but she was clearly not in the mood. For the millionth time since I’d woken up on that bus, I wondered if my friends back at San Francisco were in a similar state.

“Let’s come to order,” Chiron said. “Lou Ellen, please give Miranda her nose back. Travis, if you’d kindly extinguish the flaming Ping-Pong ball, and Butch, I think twenty pencils is really too many for any human nostril. Thank you. Now, as you can see, Jason, Piper, and Leo have returned successfully… more or less. Some of you have heard parts of their story, but I will let them fill you in.”

Everyone looked at me. Classic. I cleared my throat and began the story. Piper and Leo chimed in from time to time, filling in the details I forgot.

It only took a few minutes, but it seemed like longer with everyone watching me. The silence was heavy, and for so many ADHD demigods to sit still listening for that long, I knew the story must have sounded pretty wild. I ended with Juno’s visit right before the meeting.

“So Hera was here,” Annabeth said. “Talking to you.”

I nodded. “Look, I’m not saying I trust her—”

“That’s smart,” Annabeth said.

“—but she isn’t making this up about another group of demigods. That’s where I came from.”

“Romans.” Clarisse tossed Seymour a Snausage. “You expect us to believe there’s another camp with demigods, but they follow the Roman forms of the gods. And we’ve never even heard of them.”

Piper sat forward. “The gods have kept the two groups apart, because every time they see each other, they try to kill each other.”

“I can respect that,” Clarisse said. “Still, why haven’t we ever run across each other on quests?”

“Oh, yes,” Chiron said sadly. “You have, many times. It’s always a tragedy, and always the gods do their best to wipe clean the memories of those involved. The rivalry goes all the way back to the Trojan War, Clarisse. The Greeks invaded Troy and burned it to the ground. The Trojan hero Aeneas escaped, and eventually made his way to Italy, where he founded the race that would someday become Rome. The Romans grew more and more powerful, worshipping the same gods but under different names, and with slightly different personalities.”

“More warlike,” Jason said. “More united. More about expansion, conquest, and discipline.”

“Yuck,” Travis put in. Several of the others looked equally uncomfortable, though Clarisse shrugged like it sounded okay to her.

Annabeth twirled her knife on the table. “And the Romans hated the Greeks. They took revenge when they conquered the Greek isles, and made them part of the Roman Empire.”

“Not exactly hated them,” I said. “The Romans admired Greek culture, and were a little jealous. In return, the Greeks thought the Romans were barbarians, but they respected their military power. So during Roman times, demigods started to divide—either Greek or Roman.”

“And it’s been that way ever since,” Annabeth guessed. “But this is crazy. Chiron, where were the Romans during the Titan War? Didn’t they want to help?”

Chiron tugged at his beard. “They did help, Annabeth. While you and Percy were leading the battle to save Manhattan, who do think conquered Mount Othrys, the Titans’ base in California?”

“Hold on,” Travis said. “You said Mount Othrys just crumbled when we beat Kronos.”

“No,” I said. I remembered flashes of the battle—a giant in starry armor and a helm mounted with ram’s horns. I remembered our army of demigods scaling Mount Tam, fighting through hordes of snake monsters. I remembered my praetor dying in my arms. “It didn’t just fall. We destroyed their palace. I defeated the Titan Krios myself.”

Annabeth’s eyes were as stormy as a ventus. I could almost see her thoughts moving, putting the pieces together. “The Bay Area. We demigods were always told to stay away from it because Mount Othrys was there. But that wasn’t the only reason, was it? The Roman camp—it’s got to be somewhere near San Francisco. I bet it was put there to keep watch on the Titans’ territory. Where is it?”

Chiron shifted in his wheelchair. “I cannot say. Honestly, even I have never been trusted with that information. My counterpart, Lupa, is not exactly the sharing type. Jason’s memory, too, has been burned away.”

“The camp’s heavily veiled with magic,” I said. “And heavily guarded. We could search for years and never find it.”

Rachel Dare laced her fingers. Of all the people in the room, only she didn’t seem nervous about the conversation. “But you’ll try, won’t you? You’ll build Leo’s boat, the Argo II. And before you make for Greece, you’ll sail for the Roman camp. You’ll need their help to confront the giants.”

“Bad plan,” Clarisse warned. “If those Romans see a warship coming, they’ll assume we’re attacking.”

“You’re probably right,” I agreed. “But we could always try to contact them before we go there. And we have to try. I was sent here to learn about Camp Half-Blood, to try to convince you the two camps don’t have to be enemies. A peace offering.”

“Hmm,” Rachel said. “Because Hera is convinced we need both camps to win the war with the giants. Seven heroes of Olympus—some Greek, some Roman.”

Annabeth nodded. “Your Great Prophecy—what’s the last line?”

“And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death.”

“Gaea has opened the Doors of Death,” Annabeth said. “She’s letting out the worst villains of the Underworld to fight us. Medea, Midas—there’ll be more, I’m sure. Maybe the line means that the Roman and Greek demigods will unite, and find the doors, and close them.”

“Or it could mean they fight each other at the doors of death,” Clarisse pointed out. “It doesn’t say we’ll cooperate.”

There was silence as the campers let that happy thought sink in.

“I’m going,” Annabeth said. “Jason, when you get this ship built, let me go with you.”

“I was hoping you’d offer,” I said. “You of all people —we’ll need you.”

“Wait.” Leo frowned. “I mean that’s cool with me and all. But why Annabeth of all people?”

Annabeth and I studied one another, and I knew she had put it together. She saw the dangerous truth.

“Juno said my coming here was an exchange of leaders,” I said. “A way for the two camps to learn of each other’s existence.”

“Yeah?” Leo said. “So?”

“An exchange goes two ways,” I said. “When I got here, my memory was wiped. I didn’t know who I was or where I belonged. Fortunately, you guys took me in and I found a new home. I know you’re not my enemy. The Roman camp—we can be suspicious right off the bat. You prove your loyalty quickly, or you don’t make it there. If certain people learn where he comes from before he’s accepted, he’s going to be in serious trouble.”

“Him?” Leo said. “Who are you talking about?”

“My boyfriend,” Annabeth said grimly. “He disappeared around the same time Jason appeared. If Jason came to Camp Half-Blood—”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Percy Jackson is at Camp Jupiter, and he probably doesn’t even remember who he is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And just like that, it's over! Thanks sooo much for reading all of this random fic! Seriously, just thank you thank you thank you!


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